Educating across Cultures : Anatolia College in Turkey and Greece 9781442243477, 9781442243460

Citation preview

Educating across Cultures

Engraved marble plaque at the entrance to the Anatolia College Pylea campus.

Educating across Cultures Anatolia College in Turkey and Greece William McGrew

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB, United Kingdom Copyright © 2015 by Rowman & Littlefield Many photos in the Merzifon section (chapter 4) were taken by Tsolag and Aram Dildilian. Unless otherwise credited, all other photographs are courtesy of the Anatolia College archives and Anatolia College Alumni Association archives. Cover map illustration is from George E. White, Adventuring with Anatolia College (Grinnell, Iowa, 1940). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McGrew, William W., 1933– Educating across cultures : Anatolia College in Turkey and Greece / William McGrew. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4422-4346-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-4347-7 (electronic) 1. Anatolia College—History. 2. Schools, American—Turkey— History. 3. Schools, American—Greece—History. 4. Missions—Turkey— Educational work. 5. Missions—Greece—Educational work. 6. Missions, American—Turkey—History. 7. Missions, American—Greece—History. I. Title. LF3245.T55M44 2015 378.49—dc23 2014048197

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

In Revered Memory of Richard H. Jones George F. Michalopoulos Peter W. Topping Mentors

Contents

Foreword by John H. Clymer

ix

Acknowledgments xi List of Abbreviations

xiii

Introduction by John O. Iatrides

xv

  1  The American Missionary Movement in Turkey and the Founding of Anatolia College (1810–1886)

1

  2  Identity and Survival: Anatolia’s First Decade (1886–1895)

49

  3  Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey: An International Christian College (1896–1914)

89

  4  The Great War and Its Aftermath: Tragedies and Transitions (1914–1923) 137   5  New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

179

  6  Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece: The Interwar Years (1924–1940) 203   7  Anatolia’s Third Wartime Interruption (1940–1945)

247

  8  Anatolia Renewed: From Civil War to a Brighter Era (1945–1958)

261

  9  Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

295

10  Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

337

vii

viii

Contents

11  Anatolia Returns to Higher Education (1981–1999)

383

Epilogue (1999–2014)

403

Appendix A Major Anatolia College Dates

405

Appendix B Anatolia College Hymn

409

Notes 411 Selected Bibliography

473

Index 485

Foreword

W

illiam W. McGrew served with distinction as Anatolia’s ninth president from 1974 until his retirement in 1999. During his years at the helm, Bill led Anatolia with consistency, determination, and vision toward its goal of becoming the premier private educational institution in northern Greece. In spite of significant cultural, political, and financial obstacles during the quarter century of his leadership, he stayed the course, steering Anatolia through the shoals of increased government regulation and mandates designed to limit Anatolia’s desired departures from a statemandated curriculum in order to provide its students with the opportunities created in a school that encourages independent inquiry and creative thinking, service to one’s community and the global community, and an open-minded appreciation of the differences in cultures, traditions, and practices, not just between Greece and the United States, but among peoples everywhere. Under his hand, Anatolia became a truly bicultural institution, striving, under the oversight of a board comprised of both Greeks and Americans, to combine the best of the two cultures. Bill’s knowledge of Greece’s language and history, his admiration of her culture and arts, and his fondness for the Greek people made him a very popular and successful president. And his presidency, often “against all odds,” left Anatolia a stronger institution in every way: educationally, financially, and as an important contributor to civic society in northern Greece.

ix

x

Foreword

The Trustees of Anatolia College extend to him our deepest gratitude for this seminal work on the history of the extraordinary institution that Anatolia has become and for all he has done and continues to do to make it and keep it that way. John H. Clymer Chair of the Anatolia College Board of Trustees

Acknowledgments

T

his work tracing the fortunes of Anatolia College over more than eleven decades was made possible by its Board of Trustees who authorized the undertaking and granted access to the school archives. Those archives reached an advanced stage of organization through the volunteer efforts of professional archivist Nancy Birk. The account of Anatolia’s formative years in Turkey relies heavily upon the papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) held by Harvard University’s Houghton Library and acquired by Anatolia in microfilm format through the generosity of the Alumni Association and trustee Stavros Constantinides. The staffs of Anatolia’s Bissell and Eleftheriades Libraries, as well as the College Relations and Communications Office, were extremely helpful. Special gratitude is owed to the several individuals who read the manuscript and offered constructive critiques. First and foremost were Charlotte and George Draper, whose assistance was invaluable, joined by John O. Iatrides, Peter Allen, Angelos Billis, Julian Haynes, John Gateley and Stanley Aschenbrenner. Former Anatolia staff who assisted significantly include Margarita Falari, William R. Compton, Alice Eppinga, Allan Duane, Richard Jackson, Fofo Karalia, Constantina Kiskira, Philip Holland, Gunther Peck, and David Willis. Alumni who provided valuable reminiscences are too many to be named, but mention should be made of Dimitris Zannas, Byron Antoniades, Georgios Yemenetzis, Manos Iatrides, Angelos Papaioannou, Petros Makridis, Stella SaroglouSourvanou, Kirki Georgiadou, Antonis Papadopoulos, and Patroclos xi

xii

Acknowledgments

Tzitzinikas. Randall Warner provided indispensable support in preparing the manuscript for publication, aided by Mary Eudaley-Blatsas. Titika McGrew gave steady encouragement throughout a decade of research. To all the above, and many others, the author acknowledges a heavy debt of appreciation.

Abbreviations

AACG ABC ABCFM A.C. ACHS Ad. C. mins. ACT ASHA CARE CCSC CIA EU IB MBTAC MECBT M. H. NATO NEASC NER OECD

Association of American Colleges of Greece Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Anatolia College American College of Higher Studies Anatolia Administrative Council Minutes American College of Thessaloniki American Schools and Hospitals Abroad Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere Congregational Christian Service Committee Central Intelligence Agency, U. S. government European Union International Baccalaureate Minutes of the Board of Trustees of Anatolia College Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of Anatolia College Missionary Herald North Atlantic Treaty Organization New England Association of Schools and Colleges Near East Relief Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development xiii

xiv

PASOK RSC SBALA UNESCO UNRRA USAID USIS YMCA YWCA

Abbreviations

Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party Refugee Settlement Commission School of Business Administration and Liberal Arts United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration United States Agency for International Development United States Information Service Young Men’s Christian Association Young Women’s Christian Association

Introduction

P

hilanthropy, the love of fellow human beings, and the desire to benefit others so that they may better themselves, takes many forms. Some benefactors support institutions and the arts, while others devote their wealth, energy, and skills to socially useful projects. For all the differences in their particular pursuits and level of commitment, philanthropists share a common goal: serving the needs and enriching the lives of others. Educating across Cultures: Anatolia College in Turkey and Greece tells the story of a small group of American missionaries who chose to devote themselves to one of the most selfless and ennobling philanthropic undertakings: improving the lives of the young in foreign lands by equipping them with a solid education and instilling in them a thirst for knowledge and a sense of self-respect. Without seeking to challenge local authority and the existing social order, these educators sought to plant the seeds of a more progressive and fair civil society in which their pupils might pursue productive lives and determine their own destinies. Originally, the goals of American Protestant missionary societies that sponsored educational and other philanthropic institutions, mainly in the Near and Far East, emphasized the spreading and bolstering of their brand of the Christian faith. Over time, however, in the face of much local resistance, the efforts of some such organizations gradually shifted toward a more secular curriculum that, while including Bible study and nonsectarian Christian ethics, focused on the fundamentals of Western secondary schooling, vocational training, and character building. In 1886, a small missionary community acting under the auspices of the Bostonbased American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and its xv

xvi

Introduction

Western Turkey Mission in Constantinople (Istanbul) started a school in Merzifon, in the predominantly rural Pontus region near the Black Sea. Despite countless obstacles and hardships, the group managed to acquire suitable land, build modest but functional classroom and housing facilities, and attract qualified students, primarily from the area’s Armenian and Greek Christian minorities eager to improve their children’s fortunes through education and practical training. Because the proselytism of Moslems was strictly forbidden, most Turks kept their distance from the institution. The school was named “Anatolia College,” and its founders’ optimism was encapsulated in their chosen motto: “The Morning Cometh.” A special department combined academic courses with training in manual skills designed to generate income and help students meet their expenses. According to Rev. Charles Chapin Tracy, the school’s visionary and pragmatic first president, the purposes of that unique program were: “1. To enable young men of small means to win a liberal education through their own industry. 2. To develop a spirit of manly self-reliance. 3. To inculcate the idea of the dignity of labor. 4. To make young men practical and handy with tools. 5. To keep up physical tone by bodily activity. 6. To recover by sales as much as possible of the expense.”1 By the dawn of the twentieth century, Anatolia College had become a flourishing four-year institution whose graduates received the bachelor’s degree under the authority of its Board of Trustees incorporated in Boston; it also operated a comprehensive preparatory program of secondary education. A separate but affiliated girls department, originally founded in Constantinople and relocated to Merzifon, shared the campus. Anatolia’s growing reputation for high academic standards and a rich variety of extracurricular activities attracted increasing numbers of students and gave promise of a bright future. But adversity and disaster were never far away. In 1920, in the aftermath of Turkey’s defeat in World War I and in the midst of Greek-Turkish hostilities, the unintended consequences of Anatolia’s academic success were to prove tragic. The teaching of courses in Armenian and Greek history and literature and the sponsoring of cultural and athletic student clubs inevitably contributed to a rising sense of ethnic identity and budding nationalism. As a result, the Turkish authorities brought charges of subversion against a student group that organized lectures, poetry readings, and sports events. Its leaders, four teachers and two students, were put on trial, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging. In a special report to the U.S. Department of State, Anatolia’s president characterized the executions as “nothing less than judicial murder,” and the start of a “reign of terror.”2

Introduction xvii

Not surprisingly, the Balkan Wars and the maelstrom of World War I, in which Turkey suffered major defeats, dealt severe blows to Anatolia College. Its American staff experienced Turkey’s virulent xenophobia and witnessed at close range the death marches to the interior of thousands of terrorized men, women, and children of Christian minorities. While the principal target of systematic uprooting and extermination was the region’s large Armenian population, the men of the Greek minority were conscripted into the army or banished to labor battalions. Anatolia’s local faculty and staff were ordered to leave the area, its students scattered, and the campus became an army camp. Although briefly allowed to reopen in 1919, the school was finally ordered closed in March 1921, and its American employees, about thirty in all, were expelled from Turkey. Three years later, on the heels of the forced exodus from Asia Minor of more than a million Greeks, a core of Anatolia’s missionary community “replanted” itself in Thessaloniki (Salonica), Greece’s second largest city since 1912, now swarming with homeless and destitute refugees. The new secondary education school they established opened its doors in a rented building originally used as a casino, with a faculty of eight and a student body of thirteen. In their new location, Anatolia’s close-knit group of American educators faced hardships and monumental challenges. In the words of its leader, George White, “Conditions of living and of health are the hardest I have ever encountered. Every missionary lady who has been here for two months or more has malaria. Living in a peasant hut has its fun—also its limitations. It means eating out of a paper bag, sleeping on a travel bed with assorted occupants of the room, and keeping up correspondence with a Corona balanced on one knee. It is a great life—if you don’t weaken.” And on another occasion, while summering near a village on the hills above Thessaloniki hoping to escape the scourge of malaria: “We are trying out Arsakli, and the process is a trial. But our pilgrim people are right here, 537,100 in malaria-soaked Macedonia, and we will stick by them unless forced to quit on the job.”3 Once again, the group’s faith in its mission and its members’ boundless energy and organizational skills were rewarded. With initial encouragement from top officials in Athens, the school’s slow but steady progress was not unlike the experiences of countless refugees who struggled to grow roots and make a life for themselves in their new homeland. For Greece, a traditionally poor country exhausted from war and national disaster, the resettling of more than a million destitute refugees was a herculean task that could be achieved only with the help of generous international assistance. Partisan divisions and weak state institutions, including an inept civil service and a politicized military, condemned succeeding

xviii

Introduction

Greek governments to inaction and periodic upheavals. The dominant influence of the Orthodox Church, and the state constitution’s ban on proselytism, placed institutions even remotely affiliated with other religions under a cloud of suspicion and disfavor. As for Anatolia College, its fundraising prospects in America, always a matter of concern for its Board of Trustees, were dimmed by forces beyond its control. The Great Depression had a dampening effect on contributions to philanthropic institutions and educational projects. Yet despite the many obstacles, Anatolia soon became widely recognized throughout Greece for its high academic standards and rich variety of cultural and athletic activities. Its spacious campus on the hills above Thessaloniki gradually grew into an oasis of pine trees, attractive flower beds, and grassy grounds surrounding several stately and functional school buildings, sports facilities, and staff residences. As in the institution’s earlier years in Turkey, dark clouds of adversity did not take long to appear. In the late 1930s the school’s administration struggled to shield faculty and students from the ultra-nationalist culture and pseudo-Fascist trappings of the dictatorship of General Ioannis Metaxas, which imposed its corporate ideology on the country’s educational system and dominated organized youth activities. The outbreak of World War II made it all but certain that southeastern Europe would soon be in the eye of the storm. For Greece, the blow came in October 1940 when Mussolini’s armies struck through Albania, only to be pushed back before the Greeks’ counteroffensive—their brief “Albanian epic”—bogged down in mud and snow. Most of Anatolia’s American personnel returned home, and the school was closed when many of the Greek male faculty and staff were mobilized and the campus became a military hospital. In early April 1941, after crashing through Yugoslavia, Hitler’s mechanized forces invaded Greece and overwhelmed its defense lines in Macedonia. Three weeks later, the swastika was flying over the Acropolis. The harsh four-year enemy occupation, which the Nazis shared with their junior partners Italy and Bulgaria, ravaged an already crippled economy and caused widespread malnutrition, starvation, and disease. The nation’s social fabric was severely strained, while a powerful but highly polarized resistance movement inflamed old political divisions and inflicted new wounds. Anatolia College was not spared the suffering that surrounded it. Its campus became the headquarters of a German army command, and its buildings and grounds sustained extensive damage. Much of the school’s furniture and most of the library’s holdings were burned for fuel. Following the Germans’ withdrawal and the country’s liberation in October 1944, the relief and reconstruction effort organized by the victorious Allies failed to produce quick results and to restore the public’s

Introduction xix

confidence in its leaders. Instead, a weak and divided Greek government teetered toward collapse. In December 1944, when the communist leadership refused to disarm guerrilla bands under its control and leftist ministers resigned from the cabinet, serious fighting erupted in and around the capital; it was finally suppressed largely by British troops rushed to Greece from Italy. After a brief interval of uneasy calm and the holding of national elections—which the left boycotted and the center-right won— the war-ravaged country descended into full-scale civil war. In such a climate of uncertainty and escalating violence, Anatolia College remained closed until the fall of 1945. Under the leadership of President Ernest W. Riggs and his successor, Carl C. Compton, the school struggled with a multitude of problems, some old and familiar and some new. Repairing the school’s facilities and recruiting faculty and staff proved anything but easy, and there were shortages of supplies and equipment of every kind. In the absence of enough commercial buses, the daily ferrying of students from the city to the campus, a distance of a few miles, was a logistical nightmare. As a result, the boarding department became highly popular with students and their families, providing an attractive, if partial, solution to the busing problem. For a while, the transportation of students was hardly the administration’s most serious concern. The sprawling campus, located in the midst of what was then barren hills and open pastureland, had to be guarded by British troops against the threat of communist guerrilla bands operating in the vicinity. Such fears were not unfounded. In February 1948, a band of some six hundred heavily armed insurgents infiltrated a hilly spot above Anatolia and fired about fifty artillery and mortar shells into Thessaloniki below. For the next three days and nights, infantry units, light armor, and warplanes pursued the attackers, killing and capturing most of the guerrillas. A year later, the American Farm School, located a few miles from Anatolia, was raided by guerrillas who abducted virtually the entire senior class. While army troops and police gave chase, almost all the students managed to escape and return to the school. Despite several scares of its own, Anatolia College escaped such violence. Even during the darkest days of the civil war, the school continued to attract growing numbers of students. A girls department, whose prewar waterfront building was destroyed by fire, was accommodated on land adjoining the boys campus and, decades later, the school became coeducational. By the 1950s, as Greece began to enjoy the benefits of political stability and a growing economy, the school had emerged as one of the country’s finest institutions of secondary education. Its graduates excelled in the highly competitive entrance examinations for the national universities, and increasing numbers received generous scholarships from prestigious colleges and universities in America.

xx

Introduction

The era of Anatolia’s missionary educators ended with the retirement of President Compton in 1958. In his farewell address he told the graduating class: “You have been here for five or six years. For us, Anatolia has been our home for forty-five years. For you, Anatolia has been a preparation for life. For us, it has been our life. We had colleagues who were not only able fellow workers but also warm personal friends. We had eager and responsive students most of whom, in their years after college, lived up to our hopes and dreams for them. And we had the privilege of living in Greece, to revel in ‘the glory that was Greece,’ and to enjoy the warm hospitality of its people today. What more could one ask of life?”4 In the waning decades of the twentieth century, the Greek political landscape underwent dramatic changes, brought on largely by the splintering of the major political parties and the destabilizing influence of the palace and the military. In 1967, a conspiracy of midlevel army officers staged a coup and imposed a harsh right-wing dictatorship; King Constantine, who soon fled the country, was destined to be the last of Greece’s constitutional monarchs. Anti-American sentiment, festering since the 1950s and fanned by politicians and the media, became a powerful feature of the public discourse. The military dictatorship ended abruptly in 1974 when Turkey’s armed invasion of Cyprus caused the colonels’ regime in Athens to collapse under the weight of its own ineptitude. Parliamentary government was restored first under the conservative Constantine Karamanlis and, later, the socialist Andreas Papandreou. Such political gyrations undermined further many of the state’s already shaky institutions, including the security forces, the civil service, the judiciary, and public education. Narrow partisanship and the need to attract votes in frequently held elections induced successive governments to resort to simplistic populist sloganeering and give in to the extravagant demands of labor unions and professional organizations. Once in power, both conservatives and socialists engaged in profligate borrowing and spending and tolerated widespread corruption in the public sector. Unable to remain productive and commercially competitive, with a crushing national debt and frightening levels of unemployment, Greece became the European Union’s problem child to be subjected to an internationally mandated regime of severe austerity. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, Greece remains a nation in deep political, economic, and social crisis. During those difficult times for the country, a succession of top administrators struggled to keep Anatolia College moving forward and to shield it from the national malaise and uncertainty that had swept the country. Financial and operating difficulties, always present, were further aggravated by rigid laws and unsympathetic state officials. There were also signs of cynicism and low morale among the Greek faculty and of disruptive behavior among students. In the United States there were

Introduction xxi

those who appeared resigned to the prospect that, given the negative climate prevailing in Greece, the college could no longer remain true to its mission and might have to be closed. But in the end, faith in the school’s purpose and time-tested capacity to overcome adversity prevailed once again. Despite the economic hardship and uncertainty experienced by most Greeks in recent years, Anatolia College has continued to function, grow, and excel. Its remarkable resiliency attests to the human qualities and skills of those who guided the institution from its infancy in faraway Merzifon to its impressive presence in Thessaloniki today. Among those whose stewardship during the closing decades of the twentieth century was particularly effective is William McGrew, the author of this volume. Having gone to Greece as a young Foreign Service officer, McGrew learned the language and came to know well the country and its people. He stayed on to work for an American commercial firm before being named Anatolia’s ninth president in 1974. Under his leadership, the college acquired new academic programs, including a four-year bachelor’s degree accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. This major expansion, achieved in the face of legal obstacles and political opposition to private higher education in Greece, represented a major accomplishment and a big step toward revitalizing the original mission of the college as conceived by its founders. Similarly, the physical plant was enhanced by a number of buildings and facilities, including science and computer laboratories, a modern sports center, and one of Greece’s finest libraries. A program of scholarships for outstanding students continued to benefit the children of poor families, primarily in rural areas, and twentysix boys and girls from Turkish-occupied Cyprus were invited to continue their studies at Anatolia College and make it their temporary home. Since his retirement in 1999, Dr. McGrew has continued to live near the campus, where he is a familiar and welcome presence, and remains active in a variety of endeavors. During 2005–2009, he served as president of the American Farm School. A trained historian—his dissertation was published under the title Land and Revolution in Modern Greece, 1800–1881—he spent years collecting and studying the rich but scattered archives of the college and its Board. With unique professional qualifications and a profound knowledge of his subject, he has produced a definitive history of an exceptional educational institution and its enduring legacy. Written in a taut, direct, and unsentimental style, the story ends with Dr. McGrew’s retirement as president of the college. Educating across Cultures: Anatolia College in Turkey and Greece chronicles the long and perilous odyssey of the men and women who built a school in distant lands and devoted themselves to enriching young lives through the benefits of a modern education. It is the inspiring story of a phoenixlike institution that rose from its ashes of war and adversity to soar again.

xxii

Introduction

This impressive publication is a fitting tribute to those who served—and continue to serve—Anatolia College, and to the vision that inspired them. John O. Iatrides John O. Iatrides is professor emeritus of international politics at Southern Connecticut State University. He has published widely on modern Greek history. For over two decades he served as executive director of the Modern Greek Studies Association. Dr. Iatrides is a graduate of Anatolia College and a former member of its Board of Trustees.

1

} The American Missionary Movement in Turkey and the Founding of Anatolia College (1810–1886)

J

uly 9, 1889, was a warm summer day at Marsovan in north-central Turkey. From the hill overlooking the town, fields of wheat and barley could be seen stretching southward and eastward across the fertile Sulu plain intermingled with gardens, vineyards, threshing-floors, orchards of fruit, and walnut groves. But the object that most commanded attention was Ak Dagh, the White Mountain, whose 2,000-meter summit dominated the view to the northeast. This wide and colorful vista presented a sharp contrast to the town itself, a jumble of weavers’ shops lining dank, narrow lanes, with houses clustered together behind mud-brick walls under towering minarets. The company gathered on the knoll that day was as extraordinary as it was diverse. In the lead were the handful of resident American missionaries and their families, joined here for the first time by their countrymen from towns across Ottoman Turkey’s vast expanse. The fifty-eight Americans were said to be the largest such group ever assembled at an interior town in Turkey. Their Western dress and demeanor contrasted sharply with the appearance of the larger number in attendance, mostly members of the local Armenian community. Five or six score Armenian and Greek youth, students at the Marsovan Theological Seminary, the Girls Boarding School, and the new college that shared this hilltop campus, lined the foreground in front of the Seminary building. Ottoman officials lent dignity to the proceedings while townsmen in their red fezzes gazed from the fringes. The occasion was the third annual commencement exercises of recently founded Anatolia College, the first institution of higher education outside the field of theology to be established by American missionaries in the 1

2

Chapter 1

western Turkish provinces. The school’s early successes and its importance for missionary-sponsored education in the Ottoman Empire had induced the Western Turkey Mission to hold its annual meeting, by exception, not at its headquarters at Bible House in Constantinople but in the small provincial town of Marsovan to coincide with Anatolia College’s graduation ceremony. Likewise, the Pontus Evangelical Association of west-central Turkey had scheduled its annual conference for this time, bringing together Protestant church leaders from the surrounding region. Others came from further away, from Smyrna (Izmir) on the Aegean coast and from the empire’s European provinces: Americans, Armenians, and Greeks, missionaries and laymen. The resulting assemblage was so large that the ensuing ceremony could be accommodated only in the Marsovan Protestant church where, under Ottoman and American flags, graduates delivered orations in English, Turkish, Armenian, and Greek while receiving awards and the congratulations of guest speakers. Following the formal proceedings the graduating class led the faculty and guests back to the campus for the planting of a memorial plane tree opposite the elm seeded by the first graduating class two years earlier.1 Whereas the Theological Seminary and the Girls School had shared the hilltop site for over two decades, authorization to found the new school had been received from Boston only in 1886, the culmination of a long and sometimes uncertain struggle. The designation of “college” bore a very special significance for those who had labored for its establishment, as explained below, while its chosen name, “Anatolia,” evoked several shades of meaning. Most simply, Anatolia denoted the geographic area of Asiatic Turkey in which Marsovan was situated—that is, either all of Asia Minor or, depending upon varying usage, the vast interior plateau of that huge peninsula, excluding its coastal districts. The name’s Greek origin, signifying “east” or “dawning,” suggested hopeful new beginnings after a long night. Together with the school’s motto, “The Morning Cometh,” it offered a rich symbolism that the college was to have ample occasion to draw upon. For the institution that came into being in 1886 and was celebrated at the special commencement ceremony three years later was destined to share the fate of those whom it came to serve, the Christian peoples of the Ottoman Empire and, like them, to experience triumphs, tragedies, exile, and renewal. THE AMERICAN PROTESTANT MISSIONARY MOVEMENT IN THE NEAR EAST The founding of Anatolia College was only one outcome of a remarkable campaign over several previous decades: the establishment by American



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

3

Protestant missionaries of churches, schools, and hospitals throughout the Ottoman dominions from the early nineteenth century. Some notion of why and how Anatolia’s founders happened to be present in the remote town of Marsovan, of what brought them and their forerunners from America to Asia Minor, and of the aspirations embodied in launching a model New England college in a society peopled by Turks, Armenians, and Greeks is necessary for understanding this new enterprise. The handful of missionary educators who launched Anatolia constituted only one small element among the legion of like-minded Americans who committed their lives to evangelical pursuits among the peoples of the Near East. Across the entire thousand-mile length of Asia Minor, mission stations in regional centers such as Marsovan functioned as hubs for the propagation of Protestant churches and schools, while outside that core area of the far-reaching empire, the legion had spawned similar posts in Ottoman Bulgaria, Thrace, and Macedonia to the west, in Syria and Egypt to the south, and even extended its work beyond the empire’s eastern borders into Persia and the Indian subcontinent. This remarkable array of missionary outposts among Eastern peoples dwelling well beyond the reach of other American endeavors, in regions where the U.S. government was only beginning to establish a consular presence and American merchants had but occasional reason to call, was entirely the consequence of evangelical fervor fostered in New England beginning in the first years of the nineteenth century. The American missionary movement emerged during a period of religious revival in Great Britain and the United States commonly referred to as the “Second Great Awakening.” Featuring a renewed commitment to evangelical doctrine and the worldwide dissemination of Christian beliefs, with particular emphasis on individual salvation, the revival took root most notably in New England, where mission societies first aimed at bringing organized religion to the expanding frontier and its Native American inhabitants. The initial inspiration for carrying the Protestant faith abroad is generally credited to a handful of students at Williams College in Massachusetts. At the celebrated Haystack Prayer Meeting in 1806, Samuel J. Mills led his fellow students in committing themselves to carry the Gospel to non-Christian lands. They relayed the call to a group of Massachusetts pastors from the Congregational Church, the preeminent Protestant denomination in New England. Their appeal led to the founding in 1810 of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) based in Boston, the first of several foreign mission agencies representing American Protestant churches. The determination to propagate the Gospel in foreign lands arose from an acute sense of responsibility for saving heathen souls from the perdition that awaited all who failed to accept Christ into their lives. This

4

Chapter 1

noble purpose also provided a rallying cause and renewed inspiration for staunch Calvinists at a time when social changes and doctrinal differences in America were threatening to undermine the established church order. Though organized by the General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts, where it was chartered in 1812, the ABCFM was an independent organization. In its early years it enlisted the participation of the theologically kindred Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and German Reformed churches, thereby avoiding narrow denominationalism while broadening its constituency of sponsoring churches in neighboring states. The Board set about developing the resources, organization, and ethos required to recruit and dispatch to foreign destinations young men and women willing to risk myriad hazards for a lifetime of hardships far from their families and communities. Foreign mission societies sprung up in towns throughout New England to solicit money for the enterprise. The recently founded (1808) Andover Theological Seminary, with its emphasis on traditional New England Calvinism, proved to be a prime source of young ministers willing to pioneer the mission movement. The Board took a broad view of doctrinal issues when appointing missionaries, trusting to the individual conscience of men who had been ordained by the cooperating churches. Prominent among the Board’s designated targets were the peoples of ancient civilizations, especially those inhabiting the lands where Christianity first took root, and specifically including Muslims.2 In 1857 the Dutch Reformed Church withdrew from ABCFM, and the Presbyterian Church, upon the union of the Old and New Presbyterians in 1870, elected to operate henceforth through its own foreign missionary society. In separating cordially from the American Board, the Presbyterians took over the Board’s missions to Syria and Persia.3 From its first endeavors in India (1812), Ceylon (1816), and the Sandwich Islands (1819), the American Board came in time to oversee a wide deployment of missions in distant parts of a globe far less traveled then than now, including India, Japan, China, and Africa. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this ambitious enterprise was the supreme selfconfidence of its protagonists, rooted in the certainty that they were following Divine Will. Armed with unshakable moral conviction, they were undeterred by unfamiliarity with foreign cultures and minimal resources for marshaling and sending abroad teams of proselytizers. Nor did they endeavor to unite with powerful economic interests or seek American government support, neither of which seemed to figure in their thinking. Funding in those early years came almost entirely from contributions by church communities, auxiliary societies formed to support the mission cause, and individuals. The Board did cooperate with other mission societies, including later American groups representing kindred churches as



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

5

well as like-minded foreign bodies, especially those from Great Britain with longer experience in the mission field and closer familiarity with Eastern cultures.4 The Ottoman Empire soon drew the Board’s attention, becoming its third field of operations, designated initially as the “Western Asia Mission.” Here the small group of New England churchmen beheld a vast realm stretching from the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains in the north and east to its Arab territories in the south and Balkan possessions to the west. Encompassing three world religions—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—its population of perhaps forty million comprised a vast array of ethnic and linguistic groups. Equipped with biblical learning and some command of ancient written languages, the mostly theologically schooled missionaries, like the leaders of the Board who financed and directed them, lacked any direct experience in the Ottoman domains or acquaintance with the contemporary languages, customs, and circumstances of their inhabitants. What they did possess was the full certainty of God’s command that they venture into those realms to spread the Gospel and save the souls of their native peoples. As one of the earliest emissaries, William Goodell, wrote to his father explaining his momentous decision to embark for the Near East and an uncertain future, it was God’s pleasure that he should “leave my dearest connections, and give up all that is interesting in Christian society and friendship, in order to extend the knowledge of salvation to the ruined, dying millions in pagan lands.” The images most often evoked by those first missionaries as their spiritual and historical guides were the original Apostles who, though few in number, by their heroic journeys and fervent preaching brought the message of Christ to the peoples of the East and established the one true Church. Aware of the hardships endured by the first great founders of the Christian movement, they welcomed similar tests of their own faith in exotic lands among peoples of alien religious persuasions. Drawing their inspiration from the Apostles, as reiterated emphatically in their letters and pronouncements, and from the early Christian adherents who carried the sacred message to neighboring lands, it followed naturally that the missionaries should choose for their first venture in the Near East the hallowed city of Jerusalem.5 The original intent of the Board was to persuade the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine of their spiritual errors and redirect them to Christ. However, the cruel realities encountered by the first pair of missionaries, Levi Parsons and Pliny Fisk, who, after graduating from Middlebury College and Andover Theological Seminary, were commissioned in 1819 to set sail for the Holy Land, far exceeded expectations. Those first evangelical emissaries were unprepared to cope with the harshly alien features of an Eastern society whose strange languages, laws, modes of behavior, and diseases

6

Chapter 1

defied their earnest efforts. Moreover, not only the Jewish community, but Muslims and Christians as well, opposed their overtures. When Jerusalem proved inhospitable for proselytizing, they explored other parts of the Near East, seeking more promising venues. Within six years both men had died in the field and the Board had received a sobering lesson about the immensity of the missionary task.6 Unshaken in its resolve to evangelize the world but more aware of the formidable obstacles facing Christian heralds in Ottoman lands, particularly during the tumultuous years of the Greek revolt against the rule of the Sultan (1821–1829) when American sentiment was known to be strongly philhellenic, the Board prudently redirected its next Eastern envoy to Malta. That British-ruled island provided a haven conveniently proximate to the Muslim lands. Daniel Temple, a recent graduate of Dartmouth College and Andover Theological Seminary, was ordained as a missionary and arrived in Malta with his wife in 1822. Significantly, he brought the first printing press used by the American missionaries in the Near East. As well as serving for a time as the base for the Mission to Western Asia, Malta became the temporary site of one of the Board’s principal undertakings—the printing and distribution of the Scriptures, religious tracts, and school texts in Eastern languages. Throughout their century-long labors in Turkey, the missionaries focused on the translation and circulation of the Bible in native languages in pursuit of their goal of bringing people into direct contact with the Gospels. The importance of the written word to the evangelical enterprise was emphasized in the American Board’s instruction to neophyte missionary Eli Smith: “Yes, let but the American press in Malta, in conjunction with the one under the control of our English brethren, have a free and constant operation, for an age to come, and the foundations of Papacy will be undermined, and Islam will tremble to its center.”7 A year after Temple’s arrival in Malta, his lifelong friend Rev. William Goodell and his wife, Abigail, accompanied by Rev. and Mrs. Isaac Bird, joined Temple briefly before proceeding to Beirut to assess prospects for the establishment of a mission in Ottoman-ruled Syria. The instructions from the American Board to these young idealists leaving their homeland for the first time asserted the urgency of reaching “the multitudes of perishing souls”: Press home upon the conscience the guilt of transgression, and the lost condition of the impenitent sinner. Thus may you hope, by a declaration of the simple truths of the Gospel, to gain attention, to impress conviction, and, by the blessing of God, to produce an entire renovation in the character of some immortal beings, who shall be the seals of your ministry, and the crowns of your rejoicing, in the day of the Lord Jesus.



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

7

In Syria, the two couples established thirteen primary schools enrolling about seven hundred pupils and accomplished a few conversions, but their experience proved to be an unsettling one as they encountered sometimes violent opposition from established religious groups: Greek Orthodox, Maronite (Arabic-speaking Christians in Syria), and Roman Catholic, backed by Ottoman authorities. As hostilities sparked by the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829) spread eastward, they encountered an increasingly unstable and dangerous environment. Their schools closed by official order, they fled back to Malta in 1828, duplicating the experience of a handful of other missionaries who found Turkey in the 1820s too insecure and disease ridden to risk residence following the death there of another young American missionary, Elnathan Gridley, in 1827. Malta itself was not without serious hazards; Temple lost his wife and two children there to disease. However, from those first explorations, including a courageous trek from Constantinople to Persia by Eli Smith and H. G. O. Dwight in 1830–1831, the Board’s leaders in Boston had gained a better understanding of the “physical, intellectual, moral and religious conditions of these countries.”8 With expectations still high and peace restored in Greece, the Board in 1831 sent Goodell from Malta to the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (the common name among Westerners for Istanbul) to establish the first permanent station among a slowly expanding network in Turkey. Reforms promulgated by the Ottoman state at that time accorded, in theory, equal judicial standing to religious minorities. These developments prompted Josiah Brewer, a missionary who, after fleeing Constantinople, had returned to reopen a school in Smyrna, to venture the optimistic assessment that “there is much reason to believe that Turkey will continue to furnish an undisturbed and hopeful field for almost every species of judicious missionary effort, and particularly the establishment of schools.”9 During the following decades, the pulse of missionary activity quickened, though its scale of operations remained limited, due in large part to financial constraints. By 1860, when it celebrated its fiftieth jubilee, the ABCFM was preeminent among the approximately sixteen American foreign missionary societies. It had come to maintain over one hundred American personnel throughout the Ottoman Empire; in Asia Minor alone it had opened mission posts in fifty-five locations. No less significant perhaps than the mounting number of missionaries was the experience the Board had gained. Its determination to “evangelize the world” remained undiminished, but a better appreciation of the difficulties facing Americans who would save the souls of Eastern peoples had enabled it to refine its strategies for achieving that goal. Moreover, two generations of missionaries in the field had produced a small but seasoned corps of individuals far better equipped than Fisk, Parsons, and Gridley, not only

8

Chapter 1

to survive under trying conditions but also to work purposefully within a culture totally unlike that of their homeland. Before considering how the ABCFM shaped its mission strategies in the empire following those initial setbacks, we should take a brief look at the character of the society into which their intrepid charges ventured.10 OTTOMAN SOCIETY For the early American missionaries, the way of life in Asia Minor would have defied comprehension. The structure and ethos of this culture resembled little in western Europe and stood at a still greater distance from the recently independent United States. Missionaries in Turkey beheld a theocratic polity that fused Muslim religion with a form of rule and social organization embodying legacies from the Byzantine, Persian, Arab, and Turkic cultures. The Ottoman Empire was the only Muslim state to incorporate a large part of European territory. Since the eleventh century, when Turkish warrior-nomads began to raid and settle, first in western Asia and later in eastern Europe, a cultural and racial amalgam had evolved as both invaders and indigenous people fell under the sway of Islam and became the subjects of an imperialistic regime. Western Europe stood amazed and terrified as relentless forces under the Ottoman dynasty, invigorated by religious fervor and superior military organization, first overcame the Byzantine Empire (1453) and then powered their way through the Balkans to besiege Vienna in 1529 and again in 1683 before their westward advance was finally halted. At its apogee, the Ottoman Empire encompassed most of the Near East and Black Sea coast, the Balkans, and North Africa. For those myriad peoples engulfed by the Ottoman wave, there ensued up to half a millennium of rule by soldier-administrators imposing legal and moral codes rooted in the Koran under the supreme command of the Sultan, both secular and spiritual ruler, enthroned in that most glorious of all Turkish conquests, the majestic city of Constantinople, the “Second Rome.”11 The Ottomans erected a world state, in some respects a reprise of Byzantium, extending across vast stretches of Asia, Europe, and Africa and encompassing diverse peoples and religions. In general, the degree of assimilation to Islamic religion and an evolving Turkish society tended to vary according to the distance from the imperial center. In the core region of Asia Minor, most of the indigenous population came to adopt the Muslim faith and, in time, the Turkish language. In the European provinces, where Turkish settlers were fewer, the largest part of the population re-



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

9

tained its Christian identity, especially in mountainous regions where the central authority was more tenuous. Sultan Mohammed II, following his conquest of the Byzantine Empire’s capital of Constantinople in 1453, promulgated a set of rules based on Muslim tenets and traditional practices that provided for the coexistence of non-Muslims in a Muslim-ruled empire. Two options were generally open to conquered peoples: conversion to Mohammedanism and assimilation to Ottoman life or retention of their religious identity and the social separateness it entailed at the price of numerous penalties and exclusions, a sort of second-class citizenship. These alternatives were perhaps not unduly severe in an era of militant religious imperialism, as will be comprehensible to anyone mindful of the codes and practices of the Christian Crusaders. It was according to these terms that subject peoples were integrated into the expanding imperial state. Those who embraced Islam became full members of Ottoman society, which by this device incorporated manpower and talent irrespective of race, origin, or social and economic level. Those who remained committed to their native creeds, an option open, in principle, to Christians and Jews as acknowledged religious groups according to the Koran (though still considered infidels), were compelled to accept the status later termed rayah (subject) with its attendant burdens. Mohammed II’s successors institutionalized these rules, allowing Christians who escaped the sword to maintain their own religious communities under patriarchs formally invested by the Sultan and pledging loyalty to him. Under this formula devised by the conqueror, the Greek Orthodox and the Gregorian (Armenian) Churches were far more than merely religious organizations in the sense familiar to Westerners accustomed to the separation of church and state. Rather, they were all-encompassing communal bodies that established the identities and secured the rights of their members in a perilous environment. Their ecclesiastical hierarchies exercised civil as well as spiritual authority over the respective millets, or religious communities, which were allowed their own courts and other institutions, subject always to the higher power of the Muslim state and its laws. This arrangement enabled the coexistence of peoples adhering to alien dogmas, providing a viable, though never fully secure, social space for those who insisted upon denying the spiritual supremacy of Mohammed. Movement between Islam and other religions could be in only one direction. Apostasy was a capital offense for Muslims until the mid-nineteenth century, whereas rayahs were subject to a variety of pressures and inducements to abandon their inherited beliefs and adopt Islam.12 The balance among antagonistic peoples and their creeds achieved through the millet system was at times precarious, as when attacks upon the empire by aggressive European states fueled anti-Christian sentiment

10

Chapter 1

among the Muslim majority, thus endangering the religious minorities. Nevertheless, it served its purpose reasonably well in this heterogeneous realm until the latter years of the nineteenth century. In an era when religion served to define personal identity, members of the minority communities not only survived in most cases but often prospered, depending upon location and circumstances. Many Greeks, Armenians, and Jews became successful merchants, craftsmen, and scribes in the urban centers and frequently rose to high positions in the Ottoman state services without forfeiting their minority religious status. At most times they enjoyed a degree of security that compared favorably with conditions in the West, as demonstrated by the experience of Jews fleeing from Europe who had found asylum and formed permanent communities in the empire’s major cities. In an era that saw the Huguenots driven from France, the Puritans departing England and the Jews enduring pogroms in Eastern Europe, the religious minorities in Turkey cohabited in relative tranquility with their alien masters. On the other hand, Muslims for the most part constituted the ruling class of warriors and governors. Subject peoples of other faiths normally occupied a lower status, paid additional taxes, wore distinctive dress, were prohibited from bearing arms or serving in the Ottoman military forces, and enjoyed few rights in Muslim criminal courts. The offspring of any mixed marriage involving a Muslim had to, under Ottoman law, become Muslim. Most significant perhaps in light of their later fate, their gaiour (infidel) stigma set the religious minorities apart as subjects of contempt and, under certain circumstances, as targets of violent hatred. At the peak of Ottoman power in the sixteenth century and for sometime thereafter, there was much to admire about the Ottoman system that, by the standards of that time, excelled in law and administration as well as in military prowess. Once the onward advance of its forces was checked, however, decline ensued as the empire gradually fell behind a rejuvenated Europe. This reversal reached critical proportions by the nineteenth century, during which the empire contracted as one after another of its frontier provinces passed from its control. An especially severe loss was that of Greece, which, with Christian Europe’s assistance, achieved independence in 1829. The shrinking of imperial territory and the weakening of military capability were interwoven with internal decadence: a waning of the sense of purpose and discipline associated with the old warrior ethos, a stagnant economy, inefficiency and corruption throughout all levels of administration, chronic crises in state finance leading to crushing foreign indebtedness, and a seeming incapability to generate powers of renewal. Ingrained belief in the inherent superiority of their Allah-sanctified realm prevented rulers and their aides from acknowledging the decay until it was too far advanced. Contempt for infidel culture



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

11

slowed the adoption of new science and technology emanating from the West. Foreign visitors perceived a passiveness among their Turkish hosts, resignation toward events and indifference to seeking solutions, that they attributed to fatalistic attitudes induced by the Muslim worldview.13 The century-long missionary campaign happened to coincide with this era of extended crisis in Ottoman institutions, a time of sporadic efforts by a succession of sultans and their advisers to reverse the empire’s decline and somehow adopt the West’s superior technological achievements without undermining the cherished tenets and practices of Muslim life. The issue of whether or not to emulate Western modes of thought and behavior, often requiring what was seen as the betrayal of sacred values, was made more difficult by the aggressive behavior of European states. How could the greatest and most hallowed empire place its trust in concepts and inventions by infidel countries that pressed steadily for the confiscation of imperial territories and other humiliating concessions? Consequently, efforts at reform spearheaded by elite groups exposed to Western practices, such as the legal and administrative innovations in the mid-nineteenth century known as the tanzimat, tended to be neutralized by reactions in defense of revered traditions and established interests. Competing political forces in the Ottoman hierarchy vied for influence over successive sultans while foreign diplomats urged their own, rarely disinterested, remedies. The general thrust of reform efforts tended toward more centralized and robust administrative and military practices. The measures adopted by Turkish rulers to confront the increasingly importunate West and ward off the designs of rival Christian states could only have momentous implications for their subject Christian minorities, as will be seen as our story unfolds. Let us briefly consider the circumstances of those minorities resident in or near Asia Minor, as defined primarily by religion and membership in their respective groupings, the Ottoman millets.14 The largest Christian minority, the Greek Orthodox, was composed mainly of descendents of the classical peoples who inhabited the southern extremity of the Balkan peninsula and Asia Minor and whose language and civilization achieved wide distribution through the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Romans, and the Byzantine Empire that endured for nearly a millennium. Following the Turkish conquest, large numbers of Orthodox Christians in Asia Minor yielded to unceasing pressures to convert to Islam. However, significant Orthodox concentrations remained in the coastal centers of the Aegean and Black Seas and inland towns and villages, especially in the Pontus region, as well as the Aegean Islands. A mentally alert and active people, many Greeks improved their fortunes within the limits of the millet system largely through commerce and as artisans, while some rose to prominence in the cosmopolitan Ottoman

12

Chapter 1

administration. In the countryside, Greeks and Turks inhabited villages jointly, though normally in separate communities, while not a few villages were entirely Greek. The defining characteristic of the Asia Minor Greeks was neither race nor language but Orthodoxy. Indeed, many residing in the interior provinces were bilingual or spoke only Turkish. The latter, often called Karamanli Christians, were known for commonly writing Turkish, not in the usual Arabic-based script, but with Greek characters. Under the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, the Greek millet encompassed other national groups, particularly in the empire’s European provinces, who professed the Orthodox faith, including Serbs, Bulgarians, Romanians, Montenegrins, Vlachs, and Albanians, some of whom broke away to form separate ecclesiastical establishments under the nationalistic impulses of the nineteenth century. Most of the Greek inhabitants of the peninsula that bears their name had resisted more successfully the inroads of a smaller number of Muslim invaders and consequently retained their religion and language. Following the rebellion on mainland Greece in the 1820s that led to independence and statehood for the southern portion of the peninsula, successive Greek governments pursued irredentist ambitions against the empire, aimed at appropriating any or all territories in the Balkans and Asia Minor that had once been under Byzantine rule. The avowed Greek national designs against Ottoman domains were among the recurring threats to the empire throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century emanating from the Christian world abutting it on the west and north. They were fraught also with ominous implications for the Christian population of Asia Minor. The ambiguous position of the Greek Patriarch symbolized the precarious status of Asia Minor Greeks as Turkey faced mounting pressures from external Christian assailants. Revered by the Orthodox faithful as head of their ecumenical church but owing his authority over the rum millet (Orthodox Christian community) to his appointment by the Sultan, the Patriarch reigned over his spiritual domain encompassing Orthodox Christians everywhere from the great Byzantine center of Constantinople that was also the capital of the Ottoman state. The brutal execution of Patriarch Gregory V immediately following the Greek uprising in 1821, despite his prompt anathema against the rebels, loomed as a dark warning of the hostage status of Turkey’s Christian minorities.15 The other principal Christian minority, the Armenians, had long occupied the region of alternating mountains and upland plateaus bounded roughly by the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains to the north; the Mediterranean Sea, Persia, and Syria to the south; and Asia Minor to the west. An ancient people who had established a kingdom long before the rise of Byzantium, the Armenians had the distinction of being the first nation to adopt Christianity in the early fourth century. As their homeland



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

13

proved to be a corridor for armies and marauders moving across western and central Asia, the Armenians became severely buffeted by Medes, Persians, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Tartars, and others, scattering and finding refuge in mountain villages throughout Asia Minor and in neighboring districts of Russia and Persia. History and geography had not treated this people kindly, although at least two Armenians ascended to the Byzantine throne. By the nineteenth century, a portion of these now dispersed Armenians continued to inhabit their ancestral home in eastern Turkey in hazardous proximity to mountain dwellers, principally the Kurds, a Muslim people of unsettled and often predatory habits. Others were concentrated in villages in the central and southern regions and around the Sea of Marmara. Although the greatest number were peasants, significant pockets of urbanized Armenians prospered as craftsmen, merchants, and bankers in the empire’s major cities. Armenian males, like Greeks and Jews, enjoyed an advantage in occupational pursuits through their exemption from military service that could claim many years of a Muslim’s youth. The price paid for that advantage was the contempt and resentment by Muslims for non-warriors who enriched themselves through “lower” occupations. Armenians had a penchant for arts and letters as well as trade and finance and, like the Greeks, often found their way into the Ottoman administration. Despite the Armenians’ wide dispersal and greatly varying circumstances, their survival for centuries under powerful warlords and hostile neighbors had instilled a staunch national identity. The Armenian millet came under the authority of the Apostolic Armenian (commonly called the Gregorian) Church and its Patriarch, also based in Constantinople. However, some Armenians, mostly concentrated in the cities of western Turkey, opted for attachment to the Roman Catholic Church, which had long been active in the empire and gained legal status in 1831.16 The Jewish millet under the authority of its Grand Rabbi was much smaller, located mainly in large coastal towns such as Constantinople and Smyrna. The largest Jewish concentration in the empire was found at Salonika (Thessaloniki) in Macedonia. The influence of all three of these religious communities was disproportionate to their numbers because of the successful pursuit of wealth and influence by a significant minority of their members, particularly in commerce, finance, tax-farming, and state administration. All three millets maintained separate and self-supported networks of schools, more numerous and of higher standards than the mosque-attached Turkish schools. While the size of the empire’s separate national communities cannot be discerned with exactness, there appears to have been about ten to twelve

14

Chapter 1

million Muslims, over one-and-a-half million Greek Christians, and a somewhat smaller number of Armenians in the mid-nineteenth century. During the last decades of the century, the population balance shifted toward the Muslim side, due in part to an influx of migrants from regions of the Balkans and the Black Sea seized by the empire’s foes. Among the Muslims there existed a variety of ethnic and linguistic groups, including Kurds, Albanians, Bulgarians, and Circassians. The Laz, a distinctive Muslim people occupying the southeastern shore of the Black Sea, were skilled sailors but notorious for their violent disposition. There was even some religious differentiation; for example, groups of Kurds and some Turks in central and eastern Anatolia, known as Alevis or Kizilbashes, adhered to a heterodox Shiite persuasion as opposed to the prevailing Sunni version of Islam. The juxtaposition of religious communities was well described by Rev. Edwin Bliss, a missionary of long residence in Turkey: This mingling of races and religions is found to such an extent in Turkey, that even in small cities and towns there are frequently to be found three or four distinct races, each with its own language, its own religious and social peculiarities, living on together generation after generation, never commingling beyond the necessities of business relations. These are carried on in the Turkish language, which each man learns to an extent in addition to his own race-tongue used in the family. There are places with a homogeneous population, Turkish, Armenian, or Greek, but the mingling of races without fusion is characteristic of the country.

The overall pattern in Asia Minor, therefore, given its rugged topography and rudimentary communications, was one of pronounced regional variation and complexity in the circumstances and way of life both among Muslims and the country’s religious minorities.17 In this cursory profile of Ottoman society, some mention should be made of the level of cultural and material life. The great mass of inhabitants, Muslims and Christians alike, resided in interior villages, practicing peasant agriculture with rudimentary methods or living off flocks in the highlands. Village homes were usually crude huts with the barest of furnishings and amenities. Any sign of comfort or surplus was sure to draw the attention of the rapacious tax collector. Groups of nomads moved across vast stretches of Asia Minor that remained sparsely populated and largely uncultivated. Illiteracy was the norm, estimated at over 90 percent among Muslims, due in part to the difficulty of the Arabic script in which Turkish was written, and virtually universal among females, who occupied a conspicuously subordinate status. Professional medical care was rare in the villages, where home remedies and superstitions were the rule in a land frequently ravaged by epidemics. Roads were at best mud tracks accommodating horses or crude oxen-drawn carts. Given the mountainous terrain, it could take



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

15

weeks to reach towns in the heart of the Anatolian plateau. If the fruits of Europe’s Industrial Revolution were beginning to make their appearance in the markets of a few coastal towns, machine-made products had not yet penetrated significantly to interior towns and villages. Social and religious controls on behavior, legal bans on travel, and limited economic opportunities inhibited geographical movement for most people, outside the shepherding and military occupations. Consequently, most interior communities were virtually isolated with a confining view of the world. Amid the slow and unchanging rhythms of life, the vast agricultural and herding population had developed time-tested formulas for survival, evolving stolid folk wisdom around traditional and conservative social norms.18 The empire’s coastal cities presented a sharp contrast to the interior, with the capital in a class by itself. Constantinople, one of the world’s greatest metropolises, impressed all who saw it by its size, grandeur, and wealth. Concentrated there was the empire’s power structure: the Sultan and his court, the military headquarters, the civil bureaucracy, and the religious hierarchies. It was no less the center of higher Muslim culture, with imposing palaces, mosques and mausoleums, religious schools, libraries, and pious foundations, together with the elite circles that patronized those monumental edifices. As one missionary with long service in Constantinople observed, “To Turkey its capital is more than London is to England or Paris to France.” The second city, Smyrna, remained far behind but shared the capital’s cosmopolitan character. Both centers accommodated vigorous elements of the empire’s minorities as well as foreign communities engaged in trade and diplomacy. Few countries could have presented a greater abyss between city and country than imperial Constantinople, with its million souls straddling the strategic waterway dividing Europe from Asia, by contrast to the remote Anatolia village or mountain settlement. Occupying an intermediate space were the medium-sized towns, where small-scale trade took place in the products of agriculture and the output of workshops under the regimen of tightly organized guilds and where local government officials made their headquarters. Entire districts in the country’s mountainous eastern extremities, beyond the effective reach of Ottoman authority, answered to local tribal chieftains or remained in a lawless condition. American missionaries, through their travels to distant villages to deliver sermons and Bibles, often became better acquainted with aspects of the country than its ruling elites in the capital. They were no less appalled by the poverty, ignorance, and disease on all sides than they were astonished by the contrasting vastness of Constantinople with its rich monuments. They observed as well that the quickening of trade and manufacturing, as steam travel reached Turkey and European

16

Chapter 1

products found wider markets, tended to raise disproportionately the material well-being of the vigorous religious minorities concentrated in the empire’s cities and towns. Their rising prosperity served to sharpen the disparities between Muslims and infidels across that treacherous communal divide.19 MISSIONARY STRATEGIES IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE It was this briefly described alien world that the first generations of bold young missionaries encountered in their quest to redeem souls. In its early stages, the American endeavor in Turkey produced meager results for those determined to “evangelize the world,” at least as regards conversions to Protestantism. Nonetheless, the experience gained during those years helped the Board in Boston to better understand the complex character of Ottoman society and to refine its plans for spreading the true word of Christ. Very early on it became apparent that direct attempts to proselytize Muslims had to be deferred, given the severe penalties for apostasy. A couple of exploratory ventures confirmed the unacceptable risks involved. That realization by no means changed the ultimate objective of leading the Sultan’s Mohammedan subjects to true religion but dictated a strategy of first enlisting the Eastern Christian churches to that end.20 Since Ottoman law was largely indifferent to religious distinctions among infidels, approaching non-Muslims seemed to be the only feasible option. The initial objectives of the BFMAC in this regard were articulated by its executive organ, the Prudential Committee, when advising the young missionary, Cyrus Hamlin, assigned to Constantinople in 1839, that “The object of our missions to the Oriental Churches is, first, to revive the knowledge and spirit of the Gospel among them, and, secondly, by this means to operate upon the Mohammedans.” Muslims could not be expected to abandon “the false prophet” unless their Christian neighbors won their respect through demonstration of a higher spirituality and morality in their own lives than were now apparent. To accomplish the necessary rejuvenation, “The fire of a pure Christianity must be rekindled upon those Christian altars.” The objective was to assist the native peoples to reform their churches, “not to subvert them; not to pull them down, and build up anew.” Nor was the intention to introduce Congregationalism or Presbyterianism among them. “We are intent that their present ecclesiastical organization should remain, provided the knowledge and spirit of the gospel can be revived under it.” Proselytism, it was stressed, was not the purpose; rather it was to purify the Eastern churches to become worthy models of Christian faith able to serve as bridges to the Muslim conscience.21



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

17

However, serious obstacles to realizing the Board’s declarations of intent arose from the outset. First, the Greek Orthodox and Gregorian (Armenian) Churches, possessing a heritage reaching back for centuries before the rise of Protestantism and reconstituted more lately as departments of the Ottoman state, showed no inclination to become the instruments of foreign evangelists. They fiercely resisted Protestant attempts to promote reforms through the propagation of what they considered to be heretical beliefs and false practices. Having experienced earlier assaults by Roman Catholic proselytizers, they closed ranks against the intruders, appealed to Turkish officialdom to take action against them and threatened with anathema and attendant penalties any of their flock who should be led astray. As a result, missionaries encountered hostility and even violence from impassioned defenders of the established religious orders.22 A second difficulty was that the so-called Oriental churches followed many codes and practices incompatible with Protestant beliefs. These were rooted to a great extent in the traditions and usages of Middle Eastern society. The Protestant doctrine of direct communication with God clashed with the mediating role of priests in what the missionaries often termed “the degenerate Eastern churches.” They were appalled by religious services employing rituals in ancient languages beyond the comprehension of worshippers. Direct access to the word of God through the Scriptures, a central Protestant tenet, was barred by a scarcity of Bibles, written in any case in obsolete languages accessible only to learned clerics. Basing their faith upon the authority of the Scriptures alone, the Protestants disdained Orthodox reliance on doctrinal interpretations elaborated by early Christian councils. The common priesthood was observed to be uneducated and uninspired while the leadership of the indigenous churches seemed most concerned about its authority and perquisites. The Congregational insistence upon self-governing church communities clashed with the hierarchical organization of the Eastern churches. From the Protestant perspective, those bodies shared many characteristics of the Roman Catholic Church, toward which the New England evangelists harbored a deep antipathy. Protestant objections extended further: the adoration of saints, the use of icons and other images, excessive rites and ceremonies, toleration of alcohol, and a casual attitude toward respecting the Sabbath as a day of rest. Rufus Anderson, ABCFM corresponding secretary from 1832 to 1866, after touring the Near East, observed that “the religion of those churches exists almost wholly in a mass of superstitious forms, and useless or idolatrous observances; while the worship of God is displaced by the worship of the virgin and the saints.” Most important, the moral content of the local faiths was unacceptable. The missionaries found the

18

Chapter 1

indigenous churches excessively formalistic and of little consequence for governing behavior. They objected particularly to a disregard for the importance of overcoming sinfulness in order to gain salvation. The problem, in essence, was that the local Christian churches were so deeply embedded in an Eastern culture alien to that of the American evangelists that accommodation was virtually impossible. So while it remained the professed intention of the ABCFM in Boston to reform the entrenched Christian churches, actual circumstances channeled their efforts toward quite different results.23 In the face of the formidable obstacles outlined above, yet as determined as ever not to abandon the divine command, “Go ye forth into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,” the evangelists came to adopt the gradual approach of spreading the scriptural message as widely as possible in the conviction that it would ultimately fall upon fertile ground. Preparing for a long siege, the Board perceived the necessity of developing a corps of field workers who could carry out God’s will against formidable cultural and legal obstacles. Missionaries must first of all equip themselves with a mastery of the native vernacular in order to conduct their three fundamental tasks: preaching the Gospel, delivering the Scriptures in a written form comprehensible to the people, and operating schools. The objective was to bypass the established ecclesiastical hierarchies while discreetly seeking to bring misguided Christians into direct possession of the divine truth. As Rev. Daniel Temple in Smyrna wrote to his brother, “We are endeavoring to lay the axe at the root of the tree, beginning with the children and youth, feeling persuaded, that as they advance they will insensibly glide out of the old system.” Fledgling missionaries assigned to a mission station normally concentrated on language acquisition for at least two years with the objective of gaining a fluency enabling them to expound the Protestant creed at every opportunity. It was well understood that “the mind may be instructed in a foreign tongue, but the soul will seldom be touched except by the use of the vernacular.” During a mission career usually spanning decades, transplanted Americans developed command of at least one of the native languages, Turkish, Armenian, or Greek and in some instances became admired for oratory in their adopted tongue.24 Language acquisition also advanced the second objective of no less importance: translating the Scriptures into the vernacular so as to make them comprehensible to everyone who could read, thereby affording direct personal access to the word of God, while freeing indigenous Christians from dependence on the mediation of priests. The task of translating the Old and New Testaments into the several common tongues was as formidable as it was imperative for a successful assault on prevailing religious errors. A small group of missionary scholars acquired the requisite



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

19

skills and labored for decades to produce versions of the Scriptures for distribution by the thousands throughout the Ottoman lands. The towering figure among these expatriate scholars was Rev. Elias Riggs, a linguistic prodigy who, during a residence of sixty-nine years in the Near East, acquired the command of most of the indigenous languages. Beginning his career in Greece in 1833, for almost half a century he guided translation and publication work at mission headquarters in Constantinople. Riggs proved to be a prolific propagator both of scriptural texts and of missionaries; no fewer than thirteen of his children and grandchildren followed him in the missionary calling in the Near East. One of his sons, Edward, helped found Anatolia College, while a grandson, Ernest, was destined to become its fourth president. Reverend Riggs and his colleagues faced a daunting task, given the complexities of language usage in Ottoman lands. Turkish, by far the most widely spoken language, was written in an Arabic script that only the educated elite could read. Christian minorities in some districts had abandoned their native tongues following centuries of Ottoman rule and spoke Turkish but could rarely read it. Solutions to this linguistic maze were found in the laborious preparation of scriptural translations in simplified Turkish with Arabic characters, in Greek and Armenian, as well as two variations on the above: Armeno-Turkish, that is, vernacular Turkish employing Armenian characters, and Greco-Turkish (also called “Karamanlidika”) using Greek letters. Gospel translations were also rendered into Bulgarian, Kurdish, and a Spanish-language version for Sephardic Jews, using Hebrew letters. Riggs, joined by the first generation of missionary translators—principally Daniel Temple, William Goodell, and William G. Schauffler— worked closely with native scribes to produce works of high scholarly merit yet distinguished by their simplicity. The output from the mission press, moved from Malta to Smyrna and from there to Constantinople in 1853, reached the remotest villages via itinerant salesmen called “colporters” engaged by the mission. They made the Gospels available to anyone able and willing to read them, thereby opening “fountains of living waters here in the desert, and for the perishing people.” Missionaries happily encountered not a few Armenians espousing evangelical beliefs as a result of having discovered the Scriptures in readable form. It was estimated that by 1858 the Mission’s publication department had printed 1,365,460 copies of Scriptures and related tracts totaling 179,840,860 pages. Its output included textbooks for use by mission schools and other didactic materials. In its important publishing work, the ABCFM collaborated with American and British Bible societies, which bore much of the expense. Given the respect accorded to it by the Koran, the Ottoman government did not impede the printing and circulation of the Bible.25

20

Chapter 1

Promoting literacy was an indispensable step toward leading willing souls to the Scriptures. In view of the fundamental importance to evangelical Protestantism of personal communion with the Lord and direct access to the Gospels without priestly intercession, it was imperative that evangelical followers be taught to read. Indigenous colleagues were employed to teach language skills to a widely illiterate public, while missionaries conducted religion classes. More than thirty elementary schools enjoyed success in Constantinople and Smyrna in the 1830s, chiefly employing the economical Lancastrian method of “mutual instruction” by which older students monitored their juniors, using mainly the Greek language. In 1834 the first mission high school was opened for Armenian boys in Constantinople, though it operated for only a few years. Teaching joined preaching and printing in the trio of basic missionary tasks, all requiring linguistic skills.26 However, disappointments awaited the missionaries as doors remained closed despite their most ardent strivings. Their hopes were dashed first in newly independent Greece. President Capodistrias had warmly encouraged missionary educational efforts during the last years of the war for liberation from Ottoman rule. The worldly Capodistrias had applauded Daniel Temple’s modern Greek translation of the “Lancaster System of Mutual Instruction” for distribution to the country’s schools. During the first years of independence, in the 1830s, the American Board sent several missionaries to begin schools in Athens and the Peloponnesus. Though the schools enjoyed some success, their Protestant teachings soon drew the ire of the Orthodox establishment. The Holy Synod of the newly autonomous Greek Church, backed by the state, banned all religious instruction that differed from the Orthodox catechism and the circulation of any but its own approved version of the Scriptures. The ABCFM therefore decided in 1842 to close the schools it had planted there in the 1830s during the flush of Western philhellenic enthusiasm, and regretfully withdrew its personnel. Parallel initiatives among the Orthodox population of Cyprus produced the same result. In Turkey, the Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory VI proved no more congenial to missionary efforts among the Orthodox population there, forcing the closure of their schools in Constantinople and Smyrna. The Patriarch denounced the foreign interlopers as “satanical heresiarchs, from the caverns of hell and the abyss of the northern ocean.” The determined resistance of the Greek Orthodox Church to evangelical enlightenment induced the Board in 1844 to close its Greek department in order to deploy its limited resources more effectively.27 A separate mission to the Jews of the empire had no better success. One of the pioneer missionaries, William Schauffler, courted the Jewish community in Constantinople for over two decades with little to show for



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

21

his efforts. A briefer campaign to establish a footing among the empire’s largest Jewish community in Ottoman Salonica (Thessaloniki) in 1849 produced no better results. It ended seven years later after indigenous disease had afflicted the four missionary couples stationed there. The Board thereupon withdrew from a field that showed little promise, relinquishing that cause to the Free Church of Scotland.28 Brighter prospects, however, seemed to beckon among the Armenians. They had not at this time developed the nationalistic aspirations that stiffened resistance among the Greek and Slavic peoples against any erosion of their ethnic unity. The more porous Gregorian Church had already lost followers to the Roman Catholics. The Protestants found some individual Armenians who were less attached to established practices and open to consideration of a more direct approach to the Scriptures. Missionary H. G. O. Dwight in Constantinople observed that “wherever you find Armenians, there is a readiness to listen seriously to the truth, and to abandon long cherished errors, which is quite remarkable.” The numbers of those who responded, at the risk of alienation from their community, was not large, and for a time the small Armenian Evangelical Union conducted its activities in secret, but it was the most tangible result the missionaries could point to after years of endeavor. Basing its hopes for more inroads among this constituency, the ABCFM in 1845 renamed its posts in Turkey the “Mission to the Armenians.”29 The American Board and its representatives may not have foreseen fully the acute conflict that their evangelical overtures would produce between their Armenian neophytes and the Gregorian Church, which closed ranks against defectors. In any event, the missionaries did not shrink at the prospect of trials that could only make the Gospel better known and thus advance the sacred cause. “The more the enemy afflicts them, the more they will multiply and grow,” asserted Rev. Daniel Temple. The decade of the 1840s became a period of heightened strife within those Armenian communities where the Americans found a response to their labors, largely in Constantinople and neighboring towns. The consequences could be serious for Armenians who were anathematized by their church. They would be expelled from the Armenian millet, the legal corporation that secured their status in Ottoman society where civic identity depended upon religious affiliation. To be ostracized usually entailed loss of guild membership, hence employment, and in not a few cases led to exile and imprisonment. “In short,” exclaimed Rev. Daniel Ladd from Brusa, “excommunication makes a man an outcast from his nation.”30 Although the ABCFM had consistently maintained that its purpose was to revive spiritual religion among the “nominally Christian churches” and to assist them to reform themselves, not to undermine them or erect rival churches, there was an absence of clarity about how that was to

22

Chapter 1

be achieved, particularly in view of the stout resistance to evangelical influence by the local church hierarchies. Dramatic events between 1839 and 1846, when a small but conspicuous number of Armenians heeding the evangelical call by challenging the Gregorian Church leadership were excommunicated and subjected to severe retaliation, compelled the American Board to reconsider its position. At its annual meeting in 1842 it reserved judgment on the question of whether the Oriental churches “are to be reformed and revived, or subverted and destroyed in the progress of Christ’s kingdom.” The answer would be “determined by time and the development of God’s providence.” However, whenever those Oriental churches “having had the gospel fairly proposed to them, shall reject it” and cast out from their communion those who receive it, then it will be necessary for the missionaries to “turn from them as apostate” and to call upon “all God’s children to come out from among them and not be partakers of their plagues.” Accordingly, the evolving missionary strategy, as the head of the mission in Constantinople explained to a younger colleague posted to a provincial town, was to lead local Christians discreetly to separation while avoiding direct confrontations with the established churches: “If the bishop goes on excommunicating and casting out of the church those who have received the Gospel, after we have suffered patiently long enough, we shall be fully justified, in the view of the whole world, in gathering them into a congregation by themselves. But it is well to have on hand a good many cases of our great forbearance in order to justify this step, showing that we were not over-greedy for it, snatching at the first opportunity, but were literally forced into it.”31 The revolt within a portion of the Armenian community reached a climax when some forty individuals in Constantinople, expelled by the Gregorian ecclesiastics, petitioned the ABCFM in 1846 to form a separate and independent church under native leadership. Seeing God’s will in this turn of events, the missionaries authorized the establishment of the First Evangelical Church of Constantinople and prepared a plan for its organization. Similar acts of secession followed in three other towns in western Turkey and also farther east at Trebizond and Erzerum, led by local pastors trained and ordained by missionaries. By 1850 there were seven churches with a total membership of 222. In all instances, they met fierce resistance from the Gregorian Church and frequently suffered sanctions from Ottoman authorities. In the Black Sea port of Trebizond, the Armenian bishop personally administered corporal punishment to renegade coreligionists who yielded to missionary persuasion.32 The missionaries did as much as possible to defend their proselytes, not infrequently placing themselves in harm’s way by incurring the displeasure of the larger Armenian populace. On several occasions they were assailed by angry mobs. However, they themselves did not share



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

23

their converts’ legal vulnerability. As foreigners not subjects of the Ottoman state, they enjoyed rights and immunities, including asylum from Turkish courts, under the protection of the “Capitulations.” This curious rendering of the Turkish term meaning “the privileges of foreigners” denoted long-standing treaty concessions to the principal European powers conferring privileged status upon their nationals. A treaty between the United States and Turkey in 1830 extended that significant benefit to U.S. citizens under the so-called most-favored-nation principle. The missionaries frequently invoked this special status, petitioning the U.S. government directly or through its diplomatic representatives in Constantinople to intervene with Ottoman authorities to secure the unimpeded pursuit of their objectives.33 It was through British intervention, however, that the legal barrier to proselytism came to be removed, beginning with an imperial decree in 1847 and followed by other acts authorizing, in effect, the establishment of a Protestant millet with full civil and religious rights. A precedent had been set in 1831 when the Sultan authorized a millet for Roman Catholic Armenians. A few years were to pass before the cumbersome legal process was completed, largely through the efforts of Stratford Canning (afterward Lord Stratford de Redcliffe). This highly respected British envoy exercised immense influence in Ottoman ruling circles for nearly thirty years and was an admirer of the civilizing impact of the missionaries. With the issuance in 1850 and 1853 of further proclamations, the way was essentially open to the founding of churches independent of the established religious hierarchies. Armenian Protestants were no longer subject to legal sanctions, though they continued to face stout opposition from the larger Armenian community, especially when undertaking new evangelizing efforts in towns and villages. Despite the initial professions of the missionaries of their intention to work within the established churches to accomplish reform, the result of their interventions in the religious life of the empire’s Armenian people was the formation of a separate Protestant community. Moreover, the new legal status protecting Protestants promised to ease the way for drawing Greek adherents as well, particularly after new legal reforms in 1856 provided for greater freedom of religion throughout the realm.34 It is important to note that it was not missionary intervention alone that spurred the formation of dissident churches among Armenians and, later, among Greeks. The missionaries were few, concentrated in a handful of larger towns and not overly aggressive as proselytizers, given Ottoman social and legal constraints. Centrifugal forces within the domestic Christian communities, often involving conflicts over abuse of communal authority or apportionment of taxes, produced ruptures and, in some instances, the founding of independent Protestant churches without any

24

Chapter 1

direct missionary involvement. Such events occurred at Adapazar and Nicomedia to the east of Constantinople in the late 1840s, in districts of the interior such as Caesaria, Aintab, Marash, Urfa in the Pontus region, and at Marsovan itself. The circulation of the Gospels and other missionary publications in vernacular languages would not have found such fertile ground in the absence of self-generating dynamics within the Armenian communities reflecting dissatisfaction with the leadership of the established church.35 The missionary leadership viewed the ferment within the Armenian community and the formation of the first native evangelical churches as evidence that resistance to biblical truth was weakening. Rev. William Goodell, at the annual meeting of the mission in 1854, called for more aggressive measures, given the favorable circumstances, and advised his colleagues in Boston that “what was sufficiently evident years ago, is every day becoming more and more conclusively so, viz., that these communities, as such, will never be reformed, and that their end is destruction.” Rufus Anderson announced to the Board in Boston that a “spiritual reformation” was under way among the Armenian people. At least fifty additional locations, some of them distant from the capital, offered bright prospects for the founding of new churches. The Board resolved to expand its mission outreach wherever conditions seemed propitious and approved the Constantinople mission’s request for appointment of another twelve missionaries. By the late 1850s, it could point to twenty-eight churches composed mostly of Armenian converts, making the Armenian mission “one of the wonders in the missionary world.”36 The ABCFM faced other obstacles besides local opposition from established churches, of which a major one was financial. The costs of placing missionaries in the field, operating a press, starting up mission stations and churches, and meeting operational expenses in Boston perennially outran the Board’s revenues. As the number of foreign stations, churches, and schools mounted, the Board labored to enlarge the rolls of supporting churches and other donors at home. However, it could never hope to meet the anticipated need for pastors and teachers from American personnel alone, nor did it so intend. A reigning principle for all foreign missions from the outset was that Protestant institutions should become self-sustaining as quickly as possible in respect both to leadership and funding. The missionary role was to stimulate fervor for reform in spiritual life, to plant the seed and then nourish its growth to the point where a new church could stand on its own under local stewardship. Financial independence was seen as an essential attribute of a vigorous and selfregulating Protestant community. The indispensable tool for responding to the broadening interest among far-flung Armenian communities was a native ministry comprised



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

25

of committed individuals who possessed the strength of character, powers of persuasion, and training in Gospel truths to lead the formation of new churches. An essential prerequisite was to educate native pastors. From their first years in Turkey, the missionaries had founded schools, mostly at the elementary level, termed “common schools,” teaching local languages as well as English, Bible studies, and other subjects. Children finishing these schools achieved literacy that afforded them access to the Scriptures and predisposed them to receive the evangelical message. But to prepare mature leaders who could assume the burden of forming new religious communities required a higher level of instruction.37 To meet that requirement, the Board assigned Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, a recent graduate of Bowdoin College and Bangor Theological Seminary, to Turkey for the purpose of establishing a higher school to train evangelical leaders, using the Armenian language. An earlier effort in 1834 to operate a mission high school in Constantinople had been thwarted by opposing Armenian clerics. Hamlin founded the new institution in 1840 at Bebek, a mostly Armenian village outside Constantinople on the European shore of that fabled waterway, the Bosphorus. The new school immediately encountered animosity from the official Armenian Church and was forced to close briefly. Only three students enrolled the first year, while neighbors in Bebek stoned Hamlin’s home. As conditions eased following the legalization of Protestantism, the school grew in size and influence, developing a curriculum at about the high school level, strong in science, mathematics, languages, and history as well as religious studies. A full theological department was formed in 1847 under Dr. George W. Wood, making Bebek the first Protestant seminary in Asia Minor, graduating pastors prepared to shepherd new evangelical communities. Hamlin’s enterprising character and scientific abilities, no less than his linguistic skills and prowess as a preacher, made the Bebek boarding school an educational center in a broad sense, including innovative self-help workshops that provided opportunities for students to meet their expenses through manual labor.38 During the quarter of a century since it founded its first permanent mission in Turkey at Constantinople, the American Board in Boston had seen its evangelistic enterprise proliferate around the world. From only a few emissaries, its overseas American representatives had grown to 411 at twenty-nine country missions. Every one of those operations struggled to advance the Protestant cause against indigenous opposition in varying forms that made the task arduous and hazardous. As its envoys placed their lives in the balance, facing disease and hostility, the Board shouldered the immense responsibility of shaping multiple strategies to marshal its dedicated recruits toward the ultimate goal of winning converts for Christ. The stakes were especially high in Asia Minor

26

Chapter 1

because of the nearly exclusive presence of ABCFM representatives, unlike other missions where multiple Protestant denominations had entered the field. As the chairman of the Board’s Committee on the Turkish Mission declaimed, “If we fail in Japan, other agencies will fill up our lack; but if we fail in Turkey, all fail.” As one consequence of its unrivaled sway, the ABCFM missions in Turkey mostly avoided the denominational rivalries that burdened Protestant campaigns in some other countries. Their major competition was always the Roman Catholic Church’s widespread presence in the Ottoman Empire.39 The Board confronted a stiff challenge in meeting the constantly rising demand for financial resources to support its expanding mission network. Every missionary family had to be transported halfway around the world and provided with salary, lodgings, and education for its children. Funds were needed to reimburse native pastors, teachers, and assistants and to found new churches and schools that only in time might become to some degree self-supporting. The ABCFM’s expenses rose from $92,533 in 1829 to $343,508 by 1856. It organized campaigns to meet these needs, enjoying impressive success by the standards of that time. Still, at virtually every annual meeting after 1836, the Board confronted its chronic deficit, anguished over its inability to satisfy the constant appeal of its delegates in the field for additional means to advance the Lord’s purpose, and even considered closing some of its stations.40 In its intense endeavor to sustain its sacred cause of saving heathen souls within the limits of its meager resources, the ABCFM reached certain conclusions in the mid-1850s that for a time narrowed the focus of missionary activity. It resolved to concentrate its limited means exclusively on the supreme objective of conversion. It would curtail peripheral activities judged to be less essential, such as the erection of church buildings and ambitious educational projects that raised costs but, in the estimation of some, did not advance the pure evangelical cause and might even impede it. The members of the Prudential Committee of the American Board in Boston, laboring without respite to find ever increased support among church people at home, began to question whether some of the educational initiatives intended to open the way to conversion had not come instead to serve other purposes of a more secular character or even become ends in themselves, at excessive cost to the mission enterprise. It appeared that missionaries had often followed their humanitarian impulses to address social needs that fell outside strict evangelical objectives. The protagonist of this more austere view of the missionary endeavor was Rev. Rufus Anderson, corresponding secretary of the ABCFM. His long service with the Board (1824–1866) and broad knowledge of foreign missions gained from extensive travels, including three trips to



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

27

the Ottoman Empire, won him commanding influence within its leadership.41 Rev. Anderson, backed by colleagues on the Prudential Committee, saw the necessity of imposing firmer discipline so as to bring field activities everywhere into closer alignment with the Board’s fundamental evangelical purpose and funding capabilities. The ultimate goal of missionary endeavors was to be the establishment of independent and self-supporting native churches under their own pastors. Once that goal was achieved, the foreign missionary served no further purpose and was expected to depart to resume the process in a new field, thereby extending the evangelical outreach while conserving Board resources. A major concern centered on the character of evangelical education, especially the type and level of instruction and the most appropriate language medium. In the ensuing controversy that divided missionary ranks, the Board supported Anderson and the Prudential Committee. Henceforth, all the missions of the ABCFM were directed to accord highest priority to the recruitment of indigenous young men, training them as pastors, and assisting them to establish new Protestant communities that should become, as soon as possible, self-supporting agencies for extending further the evangelizing influence. Preaching should command a higher priority than teaching and publishing. Educational services at Board expense should focus in elementary schools on developing the basic literacy necessary for comprehending the Gospels; at the middle levels on readying students for seminary training or ancillary aspects of missionary work; and, in the seminaries, on providing theological instruction to equip new pastors. The observed tendency for educational and printing activities “to transcend their proper limits” had to be checked. Teaching endeavors not directly related to the missionary function, such as English language, science, or higher education, worthy enough in themselves but beyond the scope of evangelical work strictly defined, should be left to other agencies with corresponding purposes and means. It made no sense to provide costly education that often resulted only in distancing trainees from the very communities they were intended to serve. All instruction, therefore, must be in vernacular languages rather than in English, whose mastery opened the way to employment often irrelevant to the evangelical cause and even to emigration. Mission resources must be husbanded for God’s true work and not squandered on secular education.42 This new policy was, to a certain extent, prompted by circumstances in India and led initially to the curtailment of some educational operations there, but was intended to apply to ABCFM missions everywhere. In Turkey, the stricter definition of mission work had its greatest consequences for the Bebek school that, until the mid-1850s, offered the only advanced education under ABCFM sponsorship. The energetic Cyrus Hamlin had

28

Chapter 1

shaped the combined high school and seminary so as to provide a broad curriculum unique in Turkey. Besides theological training, students took instruction in sciences, languages, and humanities, enabling them to find employment in commerce, as translators, or in other occupations, sometimes leaving school before taking the degree and in some cases emigrating to Europe or America. The school’s science exhibits and musical performances were making it known to a larger public. A visiting delegation from Boston headed by Dr. Anderson in 1856 perceived precious resources being applied to ends not directly related to evangelical objectives. The indefatigable Hamlin’s self-help projects, designed to generate employment for students, services to the larger society, and income for the school, were seen under the Board’s new policy as diverting efforts from theological goals to secular ends. Stovepipes, rattraps, mechanized laundries, and even a bakery materialized from Hamlin’s entrepreneurial zeal. During the Crimean War (1853–1856) he contracted to launder uniforms and provide enriched bread for the British military hospital in Constantinople. These humanitarian activities brought the Seminary fame and appreciation while funding not only its own operation but also the construction of thirteen evangelical churches and school buildings. Nevertheless, the commissioners in Boston, as well as the mission leadership in Constantinople, could not reconcile the secular aspects of Hamlin’s innovations with the evangelical calling. They were troubled that more students were leaving the Seminary for employment as English-language interpreters with the British military forces than were continuing for theological training. During Dr. Anderson’s visit, it was decided to limit the number of students to those who seemed promising for missionary work, thereby dismissing about half the student body. With Hamlin about to depart for home leave, the Board in 1856 replaced him as director of the Seminary with Rev. William Clark, in order “to make that institution more fully than heretofore a theological school.” Stripped of its general education component, the Bebek Seminary’s enrollment fell to fourteen students by 1862 when it was closed pending a decision as to its removal to some provincial location.43 Free of the constraints of the American Board following his resignation in 1860, the irrepressible Hamlin continued to exercise his entrepreneurial gifts in collaboration with a wealthy American philanthropist, Christopher R. Robert. Beginning in 1863 with only four students in the former Bebek Seminary quarters, they developed what was to become one of Turkey’s most outstanding and enduring educational institutions. Robert College, a Christian academy but without a theological seminary, came to train generations of ethnic minorities and eventually Turks as well on its superb campus at Rumeli Hisari, overlooking the Bosphorus, acquired and developed by Hamlin with great effort. As it evolved in subsequent



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

29

decades as the preeminent American institution in Turkey, Robert College exerted an enduring influence upon American-sponsored education throughout the empire, including Anatolia College.44 The controversy within the ABCFM as to purposes and methods, frequently referred to as “Civilization or Christianization,” was to resurface in varying guises throughout its history. At the time of Rufus Anderson’s eventful visit, other considerations contributed to the Board’s decision to remove from Constantinople both its Seminary and the Girls Boarding School founded in 1845 in the suburb of Hasko. Experience had revealed to the missionaries the vast cultural gulf between that metropolis and the modest towns of the interior where, by the early 1860s, many stations and churches had been founded. Away from the sophistication and corruption of that center of wealth and power, far from the vigilance of church officialdom and the administrative and diplomatic circles that became enmeshed in religious issues, provincial communities tended to be more trusting and receptive. The fierce tensions of the 1840s between the Constantinople mission and the Armenian authorities, leading to the establishment of a Protestant millet, had left a residue of ill feeling in some quarters of the capital. More serious still, relations between the missionary leadership and the newly established Armenian evangelical churches in the capital’s outlying areas became strained over issues of organization, authority, and funding. The Constantinople station regretted having to report in 1862 that “the whole moral atmosphere is contaminated, and the counteracting influences are few and feeble.” Such a worldly ambience was surely not the best environment for preparing young men and their wives for the austere life of the pulpit in remote towns and villages. Maria West, who directed the Girls Boarding School during its last years at Haskoy, wrote, “Our best material comes from the country.” Smaller towns could be physically as well as morally healthier than the teeming capital where epidemics and fires periodically raged out of control. Property values were much lower in provincial areas, where favorable sites for schools and churches could be had for a fraction of the cost in the capital. Missionary families residing together in a mission compound could create an atmosphere of intense faith and fellowship unachievable in their scattered domiciles in Constantinople. The missionaries had become wary of port cities, not only Constantinople but also cosmopolitan Smyrna with its trade in opium and New England rum, and of even the smaller harbor towns like Samsun, as worldly marts given more to commerce and dissipation than to spiritual matters.45 Other developments had contributed to reducing the prominence of Constantinople in the missionary organization. New missions in the eastern and southern regions of Asia Minor registered significant successes

30

Chapter 1

in the 1850s among distant Armenian enclaves. The future of the missionary enterprise appeared to lie in remote districts difficult of access from the capital, such as Aintab, Harput, Mosul, Diarbekir, Marash, Aleppo, and Erzerum. At the same time, missionary interest in the Greeks of the empire revived following the relaxation of legal barriers to Protestantism from the late 1840s and also in the awakening Bulgarian people in European Turkey. Hence, a reorganization of ABCFM jurisdictions beginning in 1856 replaced the Mission to the Armenians with three separate and equivalent missions, Central Turkey, Eastern Turkey, and the residual region of Western Turkey, encompassing twenty-three stations and sixtyfive “outstations” by 1860. Constantinople now served as headquarters only for the Western Turkey Mission, which, however, included the largest concentration of population in Asia Minor as well as the empire’s remaining European territories. In terms of expenditures it was by far the major field of endeavor in the ABCFM’s entire worldwide network. In the capital were concentrated at Bible House the important translating and publishing activities that distributed Gospels and religious literature throughout the land. But the focus of mission work, the founding of churches and the formation of evangelical communities, moved to the Christian enclaves of the Ottoman provinces.46 As they concentrated their energies and resources on Turkey’s Christian minorities, the missionaries periodically found it necessary to remind themselves of their main objective. For instance, the Western Turkey Mission in 1863 adopted the following resolution proposed by George Herrick, later to be a stalwart of the Marsovan Mission and President of Anatolia College: “That we consider all our labors for nominal Christians in our field as having for their great and ultimate end the evangelization of the large Muslim population of Turkey; that we as American missionaries believe ourselves providently called to this work and that the time is fully come for more direct and more earnest work for Mohammedans.”47 THE MARSOVAN MISSION STATION George E. White, a missionary assigned to Marsovan, likened Asia Minor to a giant right hand, its open palm reaching out from the continent of Asia to Europe. The Black Sea to the north abuts the thumb; the Aegean on the west washes the fingertips; the Mediterranean on the south flanks the little finger. Constantinople lies at the tip of the index finger; Smyrna, at the tip of the middle finger; Samsun about halfway up the coast of the Black Sea at the knuckle of the thumb; and Marsovan about sixty miles inland from Samsun under the knuckle of the thumb.48



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

31

Constantinople’s remarkable location on the straits linking Europe with Asia and affording easy passage southward to the Mediterranean shores and northward via the Black Sea to Russia’s river systems was uniquely suited for overseeing an empire that bridged three continents. On the other hand, its position on the far northwestern fringe of Asia Minor limited its access to much of the empire’s heartland, given the peculiar geography of that immense peninsula known also by its Greek name as “Anatolia.” The Taurus mountain range paralleling the long southern shore and the Kure and Anadolu ranges (often called the Pontic Mountains) along the northern coast impeded transit from the narrow littoral plains to the interior’s vast and irregular upland plateaus. The difficulty of travel via poor roads across mountain barriers greatly limited communication with the inhabitants of the towns and villages scattered through the interior plains and valleys, thereby abridging the capital’s effective control over regional affairs. Although the Aegean seacoast gave ready access to the western end of the peninsula, it could take up to a month of often daunting travel to reach districts in central and eastern Asia Minor. It was among the Christians of those distant areas that the evangelical message found a warmer welcome in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Among the growing number of American evangelists tirelessly probing the valleys of Asia Minor was Rev. P. O. Powers, assigned to the Black Sea port of Trebizond. By virtue of its strategic location at the head of communication routes to outlying towns, Trebizond became in 1835 one of the American Board’s first mission stations, far from the more familiar Mediterranean seaports. While traveling southward beyond the Pontic Mountains and into the vast interior plateau, in 1851 Powers visited the modest town of Marsovan (claimed by some to be the ancient Phasemon) in the province of Sivas. An awakening interest had been noted there on the part of a very few members of the local Armenian community who had been influenced by translations of the Gospels into Armeno-Turkish. Rev. Powers appointed a “native helper,” while recommending the assignment there of a regular preacher. The mission leadership in Constantinople thereupon sent Rev. Edwin E. Bliss, assigned to Trebizond after completing his studies at Amherst Seminary, to organize an evangelical church among a small group of families in Marsovan. He was joined by Rev. Joseph Sutphen, whose sudden death from dysentery in 1852 postponed the establishment of a regular station. Nonetheless, Armenians in Marsovan manifested an unusually vigorous evangelical bent that spread to neighboring villages in the 1850s. A Protestant school founded by Rev. Bliss, with a teacher named Haroutian, gained more pupils. Suffering from ill health, Bliss returned to Constantinople in 1856, leaving the

32

Chapter 1

evangelical community temporarily under local Armenian leadership as an outstation. The established Armenian Church in Sivas province, by one account, oversaw fifty-six local churches, three of them in Marsovan, serving thousands of faithful, all under the jurisdiction of the Gregorian Patriarch in Constantinople. The progress of the evangelical church at Marsovan by contrast, as in most Armenian communities where Protestant dissenters encountered the wrath of the Gregorian Church, was uneven and not without friction. Religious attachment became entangled with social divisions and economic interests. The first individuals to break with the established church suffered harassment, including imprisonment, but circumstances improved as word of legal measures for the protection of Protestants reached this interior district. After a visit in 1859, Rev. Bliss recorded: “The rampant hostility of former years to the truth, seems to have all died out. Instead of the hootings and stonings that used to greet the entrance of a missionary into the city, we were met, a long way out from the suburbs, by a goodly company of horsemen and footmen, who had come out to welcome and escort us to our lodgings.”49 With only partial assistance from the Board, four Protestant schools operated by the early 1860s with over 150 students. One school held classes in the evangelical church under the supervision of a former faculty member from the Bebek Seminary, Baron Krikore. Since Marsovan showed promise of being able to support an evangelical community, in 1860 Rev. Julius Y. Leonard, a graduate of Yale and Andover Seminary, was sent there from Cesarea, accompanied by his wife, Amelia Gilbert Leonard.50 The policy formulated by the Board under Rufus Anderson accorded high priority to new mission endeavors in receptive provincial districts. As early as 1854–1855, a theological seminary for training pastors was opened for the Armenian community far to the southeast at Aintab and another at Harput in 1859. Satisfied with results there, given its heightened emphasis upon elementary and theological training, the missionary leadership decided to reopen in Marsovan, “in a somewhat modified form,” the seminary recently closed in Bebek. It was also decided to relocate there the Girls Boarding School from Haskoy that had been closed at the same time. Two more missionaries, E. M. Dodd and John F. Smith, with their wives, joined the Leonards in 1863 to form a full station and reestablish the two schools from the capital region. Delays were incurred due largely to a temporary thinning of missionary ranks from illness and departures occasioned by the U.S. Civil War, possibly aggravated by a misunderstanding between missionaries and local Armenian Protestants over school property and authority. Finally, in the summer of 1864, a preliminary class of five young men was assembled to prepare the way for the opening of a seminary in April 1865. The Girls School resumed



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

33

operation that same year under the supervision and financial auspices of the Women’s Board of Missions, a subsidiary organization of the ABCFM. The establishment of a station signified a serious intention to develop a permanent missionary presence. It meant an investment in property and the formation of an American enclave designed to exert influence throughout a larger region. Unlike rival Catholic orders, Protestants came with their families, who shared in the mission enterprise and all its attendant trials, giving further sign of the strength of their commitment. Frequently, they remained for decades, making the station their life’s work. Marsovan thus became one of the seven stations of the Western Turkey Mission with headquarters at Constantinople.51 At first glance, Marsovan might have seemed an unlikely choice as the training site of evangelical pastors for the entire Western Turkey Mission. This remote town of about 15,000 had no particular distinction. Occupying a northwestern corner of the province (vilayet) of Sivas (roughly the area of the classical Sebastia), it was best known to Muslims for its shrine honoring the Dervish Saint Piri Baba and for a large seventeenth-century mosque commissioned by a Grand Vizier who hailed from Marsovan. Armenians, who termed the surrounding region “Lesser Armenia,” by contrast to their historic homelands further to the east, knew of Marsovan for its Gregorian monastery. These features were unlikely to have made any great impression upon the American missionaries. Turkish and Armenian communities occupied their separate neighborhoods in crowded dwellings of sun-dried brick. The area’s modest economy depended upon the production of grains on the adjacent plain, supplemented by fruits, nuts, and vegetables and a small yarn industry based upon the home spinning of cotton supplied from Cilicia in southern Turkey. The main means of access to Marsovan was through the Black Sea port of Samsun where steamships had to anchor offshore to unload passengers and cargo by lighters. From there a three-day ride by horseback, oxcart or camel caravan took travelers over sixty miles southward across mountain trails and through forests to Marsovan, situated to the east of the long Kizil Irmak River (Halys in Greek), which makes a huge loop before flowing into the Black Sea. Most journeyers in fact bypassed the fork leading to Marsovan’s small valley and instead continued to the regional center of Amasia some thirty miles to the southeast. The trip from Constantinople via Samsun usually required at least a week, depending upon weather conditions. The alternative, overland travel by horseback from the capital across 350 miles of rugged terrain, was far slower and was made hazardous by the prevalence of bandits. The nearest telegraph station was at Yozgat, five days away in the 1860s. However, the missionary experience at Marsovan had been particularly gratifying, due in large measure to the strong spirit of its Armenian

34

Chapter 1

populace, then comprising several thousand individuals. The initial strife attendant upon the first evangelical stirrings had largely subsided and the missionaries had won a degree of respect throughout the district. The Armenian Protestant congregation had reached three hundred in number, one of the largest in western Turkey. Such circumstances contrasted, for example, with the provincial capital of Sivas where the Gregorian Church mounted a stout defense against proselytism, the nearer city of Tocat where an ABCFM seminary founded in 1854 was destroyed by fire a few years later, or the local district (sanjak) center of Amasia where Protestant efforts flagged. Relations between the two main ethnic groups appeared more harmonious than in many parts of Turkey, particularly its eastern regions, due in part to the common use of Turkish by the Armenians of Marsovan. Moreover, the larger region served by the station, approximately twice the size of New England and comprising Turkey’s northcentral provinces bordering on the Black Sea, was estimated at that time to include about 35,000 Christian Armenians and twice as many Greeks among a total population of at least 350,000. During these early years seven outstations had been formed under local evangelical leadership in Marsovan’s hinterland. Furthermore, the town’s physical environment was comparatively healthful, owing to its nearly 800-meter elevation in the southern foothills of the Pontic Mountains and its relatively dry climate. The area was self-sufficient in fruits and vegetables, while several flour mills processed locally grown wheat and barley. It would appear that most of the cultivators held their own lands, by contrast with many districts where sharecropping prevailed. Land just above the town, favored by refreshing breezes and access to a water supply, could be purchased at advantageous prices. Perhaps the deciding factors were its geographical and cultural distance from the capital’s deleterious influences and the enthusiasm of the resident missionaries, Revs. Leonard, Dodd, and Smith. Yet another consideration was the accelerated activities of Roman Catholic missionaries in Marsovan, who by 1862 had drawn away a third of the students enrolled in the Protestant schools. Reverend Leonard reported that the “emissaries of Rome have almost without opposition built a fortress in the very midst of us.”52 It was no coincidence that the Seminary and Girls School were transferred to Marsovan at the same time. The widespread practice of early marriage resulted in seminary students often having young wives who would be expected to assist them in their ministerial duties. Females were admitted to the three-year program at age fourteen but could enter a preparatory section as young as twelve. By enrolling in the Girls School, current or prospective spouses could prepare themselves mentally and morally as helpmates for what often proved a trying and sometimes



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

35

dangerous way of life. Maria A. West had directed the school in Constantinople and made extended visits to Marsovan in 1862 and 1864 to facilitate its transfer, despite suffering there an illness that nearly took her life. Beginning in 1865 with only eight girls in a cramped, rented space, the school grew under the long-term direction of Eliza E. Fritcher, formerly a teacher at Mount Holyoke Seminary, sent to Marsovan to organize the school. Fritcher was assisted by Mount Holyoke alumnae Flavia Bliss (1868–1870) and Frances Washburn (1872–1883) and later by Mary P. Wright (1885–1891) and Rev. Smith’s daughter, Bertha, from 1889 until her death from typhus in 1892. An important figure from these years was Anna Bedrosian-Felician. After graduating from the Girls School at Haskoy, she returned to her hometown of Marsovan to lead a school for girls that met in Rev. and Mrs. Leonard’s home. Having accompanied the Leonards to America for one of their furloughs (1868–1870), she became a forceful presence in the Girls School for half a century. A second Armenian stalwart was Pampish Prampion Gureghian, an 1869 alumna who taught and oversaw resident students well into the next century. Townspeople gradually overcame the universal prejudice in the Near East against educating females. The school graduated its first class in 1868. As enrollment mounted to thirtyfive, including both day students from Marsovan and boarders from several provinces, property was purchased and a building erected for the school in 1869.53 The Seminary, admitting only males who intended to work as evangelists, began in rented quarters with its first regular class of eight Armenian youths who graduated from the four-year program in 1868. Vermont-born Rev. Smith, whose ministry in Turkey lasted thirty-three years, served as principal teacher for a curriculum including moral science, evidences of Christianity, Butler’s Analogy, Natural and Systematic Theology and Biblical exegesis. He was assisted initially by Rev. I. F. Pettibone and for many years by an Armenian instructor, Avedis Asadourian, who became an ordained minister. The Board in Boston authorized the purchase of property adjoining the town to the north, and in 1871 a building was erected for the Seminary, followed in 1878 by new quarters for the Girls School. After the loss of Rev. Dodd to cholera in 1865, Charles Tracy, having completed studies at Williams College and Union Seminary, arrived with his wife, Myra, to begin a long tenure that was to shape the further growth of these Christian educational initiatives.54 Given the small number of candidates for the Protestant ministry, enrollment in the Seminary initially remained low. Five members of its first graduating class were certified to preach and then dispatched to assume ministries in new evangelical communities. By the late 1870s, the number of evangelical outstations under Marsovan’s supervision had increased

36

Chapter 1

to seventeen. The Seminary’s entering class in 1878 numbered twentyeight, which was to be its largest ever. Marsovan thus became the training center for pastors throughout the entire western part of Asia Minor, while many of its graduates found churches even further afield. To ordain new pastors and coordinate the work within the surrounding region, the Central Evangelical Union was formed, which by 1879 included eleven churches. The quality of instruction prompted the Prudential Committee to write: “The best opportunities for theological study are now provided at Marsovan. The men connected with the theological seminary are such as would do honor to similar institutions at home.” It prided itself on being the “Andover of Asia Minor.”55 THE FOUNDING OF ANATOLIA COLLEGE The Seminary as reconstituted in Marsovan conformed to the current policy of the American Board requiring missionary-supported higher education to have as its overriding aim the preparation of young men for evangelical service. The curriculum was restricted mostly to theological subjects and taught principally in the vernacular language, Armenian, in accordance with the same minimalist policy that had caused the Seminary and Girls School to be brought to this small provincial town after being closed in Constantinople. Nonetheless, the question of the role of education under missionary auspices was far from being resolved; on the contrary, it was one of the major issues resounding throughout the century of American evangelical presence in Turkey. Missionary views toward education slowly began to diverge from the strict mandates of the 1850s and 1860s. Nathaniel G. Clark, who replaced Rufus Anderson as senior corresponding secretary for the American Board and held that influential position for thirty years (1865–1894), showed far more flexibility on educational issues, as did the newer members of the Prudential Committee. The outstanding success of Robert College, drawing 250 students of diverse nationalities to its broad-based curriculum by the early 1870s, and of the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, begun by the American Board in 1866, contributed to a broader view of the educational role of missions. A report on the Board’s educational activities in 1873–1874 referred to the five seminaries in the empire as “Collegiate Theological Institutes,” implying a wider scope of study. The report registered a perceptibly altered view in favor of “awakening an intellectual life throughout the whole empire.” While the preparation for evangelical work continued to have first claim on mission resources, as financial straits remained severe, there developed an increasing appreciation for “the necessity of combining scientific studies with theological,



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

37

in order to [sic] the best development of the intellectual as well as the religious character of the young men.” Special concern was also to be accorded to higher education for women “in view of their greater degradation.” Rev. Edwin Bliss in Constantinople reflected the new outlook by observing, “The permanency of the results of the direct missionary work might be very problematical should not the Christian college come in to put its impress upon the leading minds of the communities where that work has been carried on.” It was but a short step to mission-organized and mission-financed higher education beyond the confines of theology. Much of the impetus to take that step came from provincial Christian communities thirsting for educational opportunities, usually, though not always, led by evangelicals. The Prudential Committee broke new ground by approving Dr. Clark’s recommendation to grant the request of evangelical churches in the Aintab region for assistance in establishing higher education. The result was the opening of Central Turkey College in 1876, which combined religious studies with medical training and modern languages. The running controversy over “Civilization or Christianization” continued to enliven the deliberations of the American Board and pose practical issues for their representatives in the field, but the terms of debate had shifted away from the narrow mid-century positions that produced the closing of Bebek Seminary.56 Missionary educators in the field, gratified to observe improvement in the lives of people who had become their everyday companions and who now begged for more and better education, pressed for opportunities to enlarge the civilizing influence of their schools. The principal obstacle to an enlarged scope of work and a broader curriculum was perennially inadequate human and material resources. This major constraint upon the pursuit of evangelical goals intensified in the early 1880s at the same time as other issues arose to generate a crisis within the Western Turkey Mission. In its ever-expanding quest to bring the Gospel message to new lands and peoples, the ABCFM Board was compelled to make painful decisions when allocating scarce funds among its far-flung missions. Many worthy causes and calls for help had to be denied. Should preference be given to sustaining the continued growth and stability of already established missions, or would resources be better employed to begin new endeavors in promising lands? Attention focused on the Western Turkey Mission that consumed the largest share of ABCFM funds worldwide. After half a century of labor and the establishment of an indigenous evangelical church with branches throughout the region, buttressed by schools, hospitals, and the publication of vast quantities of the Scriptures in local tongues, should not the enterprise there become self-supporting? Moreover, had the moment perhaps arrived to advance to the final stage of conversion

38

Chapter 1

of the Muslim population now that a bridge to that ultimate objective had been laid down by the establishment of a fair number of evangelical churches? In order to narrow the gap between means and aspirations, the Prudential Committee in 1881 announced to its Western Turkey Mission a revised strategy envisioning a more rapid transition toward self-sustaining evangelical communities able to support their churches financially, shorn of any missionary presence or Board funding. The Committee wish to secure the adoption of such plans as will awaken and sustain a just sense of responsibility for the future progress of the Gospel and prepare the way for the entire independence of outside aid as early as possible. These suggestions are in keeping with the original plan of the Board in establishing missions in the Turkish Empire. It was felt that when an evangelical community should have been organized, enough to illustrate to the old Armenian Church, as well as to the Muslims, a true evangelical faith, attention could be turned more fully to other races and to other parts of the world.

Accordingly, the several mission stations in Turkey were instructed to plan for annual reductions in Board support, to be put into effect over the coming years.57 This new policy created consternation in the field as the stations sought ways to transfer the costs of pastors’ and teachers’ salaries, church buildings, schools, and equipment to the local evangelical communities. Given the widespread poverty in the countryside, a real danger was perceived that some churches and schools might collapse. The task that befell the missionaries of convincing their protégés of the necessity of taxing their bare resources further was an unenviable one, although in general they agreed with the principle of creating self-reliant congregations. In many ways, Marsovan, after thirty years of evangelical effort, seemed to meet the Board’s expectation. So averred Rev. Joseph Leonard, who by 1880 had completed two decades of service there. He viewed the pioneer phase of mission work as virtually finished. The results were a self-sustaining evangelical body numbering five hundred “made far more intelligent in morals and religion than the communities from which they were derived;” a church of two hundred members, modeled upon Congregational churches in America, whose native pastor was a graduate of the Seminary; and a meetinghouse built jointly by the mission and the local evangelical society, which now owned it. Marsovan, all seemed to agree, was one of the most successful examples of missionary accomplishment in the entire Ottoman Empire. The main reasons for a continued missionary presence, in Leonard’s view, were to supervise the Seminary and Girls School and to direct evangelical work throughout the larger region, which by now included sixteen outstations, “because this is the only healthy town within an area of twelve thousand square miles



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

39

where a missionary family can properly reside the whole year round.” The Marsovan station declared its full agreement with the principle of self-supporting local churches and its readiness to put the Board’s new policy into effect.58 If in some respects Marsovan showed promise of meeting the Board’s rigorous requirements, other circumstances could be seen to favor an even larger role for the mission station. The Armenians of the town manifested an exceptional desire to educate their children despite their poverty. The four Board-supported elementary schools enrolling some one hundred fifty students in the 1860s had doubled their enrollment the following decade. Aspiring to a broader and more utilitarian education than the primarily theological concentration mandated by the American Board, the Armenian townspeople expressed a willingness to make sacrifices for greater educational opportunities. Their ambitions were encouraged by the example of Armenian communities in distant Harput and Aintab, where full-fledged “colleges” had emerged in the 1870s under missionary leadership.59 Although the educational aspirations of the Armenians were less rooted in purely spiritual concerns than the missionaries might wish, they seemed nevertheless to serve the mission’s objective of providing a stronger grounding for theological studies. Rev. Smith had conducted preliminary instruction for members of the first Seminary class. When four of the first ten dropped out, it was seen as necessary to reinforce the preparatory phase. The required preparation for entrance to the Seminary was subsequently extended to three years, after which successful candidates continued “further scientific study” and languages during the first two years of seminary before concluding with two years of “purely theological study.” In the upgrading of pre-theological education, Englishlanguage instruction was no longer treated as marginal. George Herrick wrote from Marsovan: “Long experience has shown that we must open to our native ministry the resources of our own New England language and literature, and this we are now prepared to do.” Final examinations came to be conducted in English, and its instruction was introduced in the Girls School as well, in 1882.60 Yet another factor influencing a broader concept of mission-inspired education was the new generation of missionaries who had succeeded the pioneers. Men such as George Herrick, Charles Tracy, and Edward Riggs, who arrived in Marsovan in the late 1860s and 1870s, fully espoused the Board’s evangelistic goals but tempered their pursuit with strong humanitarian concerns. They were attuned to the civilizing impact of mission work and alert to the moral and material, as well as the spiritual, needs of the people they hoped to serve. Moreover, it had become increasingly apparent to the missionaries that the success of their enterprise to propagate Protestantism through the steady expansion of their network

40

Chapter 1

of churches depended upon a growing corps of well-trained domestic pastors. They observed their students’ weak interest in purely theological studies, lamenting the small number of qualified men who presented themselves for the Seminary. A broader and more advanced preparatory curriculum would draw a larger number of candidates, prepare them for rigorous theological study, and better qualify them to assume leadership of new evangelical churches. Given this apparent convergence of aims between the missionaries and their Armenian associates, a basis seemed to emerge for recasting the educational offerings at Marsovan in a way that met the requirements of the Board, the station, and the Armenian community. Charles Tracy took the lead in pressing for a larger view of mission education that went well beyond the purely theological. The new formula, as elaborated by the Marsovan team, was to make a more formal division between purely theological training and the linguistic, scientific, and other more general subjects. The latter would comprise a separate curriculum designed to better prepare candidates for the theological phase while also meeting the popular demand for a freestanding academy whose graduates might aspire to a variety of occupations. An essential feature of the plan was to shift the cost of the non-theological education as much as possible to the local community. Whereas Seminary students studied at Board expense, those enrolled in general education would pay tuition. This was an important consideration, given the Board’s reduction of external support. But would the Board approve this expansion into secular education, and could the local Christians shoulder the burden?61 There was some urgency in resolving this fundamental question, upon which rested the future of American education at Marsovan. Other Christian communities in the region also aspired to more advanced education. A high school already operated at Bardezag to the west. The nearest mission stations at the provincial capital of Sivas and at Trebizond also sought to develop advanced training. Both were much larger regional centers, Sivas being the seat of a U.S. Consulate as of 1886. Their proposed schools would surely tap Marsovan’s potential pool of students. That pool was now seen to include Greeks from the Black Sea coast and interior towns who showed a growing interest in the Marsovan schools, despite their distance, but who could be drawn away by closer opportunities. A more ominous threat emerged from Jesuits who established a school in Marsovan itself. George Herrick insisted that the very existence of the Seminary depended upon attracting more and better qualified students to a broader educational program and that failure to establish a higher preparatory school would mean disaster. Charles Tracy made his position no less plain to the Prudential Committee: “If you don’t give us leave to march on in the line of education, you will make a greater mistake than we have ever known you to make.”62



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

41

In their eagerness to lead the way in missionary-sponsored education in western Turkey, to shore up the vulnerable Seminary and satisfy the urgings of their adopted community, the Marsovan team plunged into an undertaking that proved to be premature. On the strength of a promise by local Armenians to subscribe a substantial sum to be matched by the Board in support of a new “college,” a designation that resonated powerfully with Armenians at that time, the Marsovan station in 1881 announced the founding of “Anatolia College,” and publicized the same in the missionary press. A committee comprising missionaries and natives prepared the course of study and obtained a permit to erect a building. As regards its title, George Herrick explained, “We have taken the name Anatolia College rather than Marsovan Coll[ege] because it is too good a name to be left unused, it is unappropriated and accurate.” Unfortunately, disagreements among the Armenian sponsors nullified their contribution, and the college scheme had to be set aside for the time being.63 Chastened but undeterred, the Marsovan educators persevered by forming instead a “high school,” a more modest project without Armenian participation in its initial funding or management, which nonetheless addressed the same objective of separating general from theological training while upgrading both. Harbinger High School was designed to motivate and prepare its students for the Seminary, providing daily instruction in the Scriptures and engendering “a thoroughly evangelical spirit,” as Rev. Riggs noted. While a donation from friends in England permitted its start-up, every effort was made to assign as much of the cost as possible to the pupils’ families. Under the direction of Rev. Charles Tracy, the high school commenced in the fall of 1881 in the basement of the Seminary building with only four students who met most of their own expenses. The chief instructor was Arakel G. Sivaslian, who, as enrollment expanded, assigned the more advanced students to teach beginners. Admitting boys who aspired to other careers besides the pastorate, Harbinger High School drew youth from the surrounding provinces and within three years drew a surprising enrollment of one hundred twenty. It demonstrated the capability of the Marsovan region to support a much larger school than had been thought possible. The school’s very title anticipated further developments.64 The success of its initiative and the eagerness of the Armenian community for still greater educational opportunities reinforced the Marsovan station’s determination to elevate the high school. The mission team was convinced that the entire evangelical work in its region and beyond had come to depend upon further educational initiatives. Armed with a proposal from the “Evangelical Communities of Marsovan and its vicinity,” Rev. George Herrick petitioned the annual meeting of the Western Turkish Mission in 1885 for authorization to establish “Anatolia College.”

42

Chapter 1

Most significantly, in view of the American Board’s constrained finances, the proposal included a pledge by the native community to share startup costs and eventually assume full responsibility for all non-theological education, leaving only the Seminary to be funded by the Board. Accompanying the proposal was a suggested constitution for the new college that provided for Armenian participation in its management. The Mission agreed unanimously and in its recommendation to the Prudential Committee emphasized the promise of local funding to eventually reduce the overall cost to the Board. The proponents of this new institution consciously modeled their strategy for winning Board approval on the success of Central Turkey College at Aintab and Armenian (later Euphrates) College at Harput.65 In the meantime, however, two interrelated issues came to impinge ominously upon the proposed new college. A serious rift had developed between the American leadership of the Western Turkey Mission in Constantinople and chief figures in some of the nearby evangelical churches. According to a fundamental principle of Congregationalism, individual churches enjoyed self-governing rights. Once a new church was formally established, it passed from missionary supervision to that of its elected leadership while continuing to be part of the larger evangelical community. This eminently democratic practice encountered not a few obstacles in Turkey, partly due to the continuing financial dependence of many churches and their ancillary schools upon missionary funding, but, more fundamentally, because of the deep cultural divide between Americans and Eastern peoples with contrasting traditions and outlook. Disagreements over such issues as governance and financial control deepened among the older and predominantly Armenian churches near Constantinople, which in 1864 had formed the Bithynian Union, the first in a series of regional associations of Protestant churches. Relations between the missionary leaders and the churches they had engendered became so strained that the American Board and its Prudential Committee each sent a deputation to Constantinople in 1883 for an unprecedented conference with missionary representatives from all of Asia Minor. As a consequence, the Board resolved to assign greater responsibility to the local churches, with a view toward gradually withdrawing its missionaries from regions where the evangelical movement had matured sufficiently. In Marsovan, the result was the formation of the Pontus Evangelistic Association, composed of native preachers and teachers authorized to join the missionaries in managing the station’s work.66 The second and related issue, more directly relevant to the proposal for a new college at Marsovan, pertained to the very continuance there of the theological seminary responsible for training pastors for the entire western Turkey region. There was perceived to be resistance on the part



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

43

of ambitious young men to taking up residence in that remote country town, whereas an easily accessible urban center would be more likely to attract them. The Bithynian Union churches strongly preferred the nearby capital; acceding to their request might facilitate reconciliation with those alienated communities. Missionaries working with the few newly formed Greek churches, especially in the Smyrna region where the Greek Evangelical Alliance was based, argued that Marsovan, lacking any significant Greek population, could not hope to draw Greeks to its Seminary. Missionary headquarters at Constantinople regretted it had no institution of higher education under its auspices, lamenting the loss of Bebek Seminary to Marsovan some two decades earlier and pointed out the cultural amenities for a school in the capital. Such considerations led the Western Turkey Mission in 1884 to vote for the return of the Seminary from Marsovan to Constantinople, and to reconfirm that resolution at its next two annual meetings. The Prudential Committee tentatively approved the Mission’s proposal, thereby raising grave doubts about the viability of a college, at that point still unauthorized by the Board, once the Seminary had departed Marsovan.67 For the Marsovan missionaries, the establishment of a college had assumed immense importance for the continuing success of their evangelical work. They viewed it as inextricably linked to the Seminary, educationally and financially. No less significant was the commitment to the project by the Armenian community. The Marsovan team could claim success in building a relatively substantial Protestant following and in winning a degree of trust among the local Armenians that their colleagues at other stations could only envy. The contribution pledged by the impecunious Armenians not only represented an important financial asset for the projected college but, perhaps even more important, signified a moral commitment. Their willingness to share in its fortunes advanced the ultimate missionary goal of transferring responsibility to self-sustaining local bodies. The importance of retaining the trust of their Armenian comrades was forcefully conveyed by Rev. Edward Riggs, who traveled to Boston and presented the Marsovan station’s case at the Board’s annual meeting in October 1985. Shortly after, Riggs wrote to the Board that “a dash of cold water which shall chill their enthusiasm in this laudable effort will be one of the saddest backward steps ever taken in Marsovan, and I should not wish to be responsible for the results.” Riggs expressed the sentiments of his Marsovan colleagues with his passionate appeal: “Pile on work onto your missionaries—tell us each to do the work of three men, to struggle on with heavy burdens and to lay our bones in foreign soil—but don’t tell us to withdraw from cooperation when the natives are holding out their hands ready to make great sacrifices for a noble work! Pardon my warmth—I speak from a full heart.”68

44

Chapter 1

The Board did indeed approve the founding of the College, agreed to provide an annual grant for it, and authorized Edward Riggs, soon to embark on furlough, to seek further funds for its support in England and the United States. It seems to have been swayed in its decision by the success of the high school, the compelling appeal from the Armenians of Marsovan, one of the most fervent and cooperative evangelical communities in western Turkey at that time, and the persuasiveness of Reverends Riggs, Tracy, and Herrick. Although the Prudential Committee had initially approved the proposal to remove the theological seminary from Marsovan, after further consideration it reversed its decision. Working against that scheme were the high cost of property and operations in Constantinople, doubts about the true commitment to its support by the local churches in that region, and continuing reservations about the suitability of the capital’s environment for training pastors for village pulpits that had led originally to the removal of the Seminary to Marsovan twenty years earlier. Moreover, there was concern by the Board that “the Seminaries in Central and Eastern Turkey would be so overshadowed by the proposed institution as practically to be superseded.” Finally, the evangelical churches in the Marsovan field influenced the issue further by promising additional financial support for seminary students, while the Marsovan missionaries lost no opportunity to argue against a seminary in Constantinople.69 The founding of Anatolia College proved feasible only because of some relaxation of ABCFM strictures against education not purely theological. Experience in training native pastors to assume the leadership of their evangelical communities had shown the need “to raise up an educated class that shall be competent to discuss the popular questions of the time, touching fundamental laws in morals and religion, as well as to instruct them in the saving truths of the Gospel.”70 Consequently, as the Board came to acknowledge in the mid-1880s, the scope of missionary effort had been widened and the role of education enhanced, “that while the higher grades of schools are not to be established as a primary means of evangelical work, they are one of the agencies imperatively necessary to secure the best and most permanent results of such work.”71 At the very time when Tracy, Herrick, and Riggs were striving to forge a stronger set of institutions in close collaboration with their Armenian associates in Marsovan, the leading figure on the ABCFM’s Committee for the Western Turkey Mission was none other than the founder of Bebek Seminary and Robert College, the Rev. Cyrus Hamlin.72 However, this larger view of the relevance of education for evangelism was still tentative in the missionary outlook. The same year Anatolia was founded, the Education Committee of the Western Turkey Mission, of which Charles Tracy was a member, prepared a set of principles adopted by the full Mission to govern educational initiatives. While recognizing



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

45

that neglect of higher education would leave that field to the “hands of infidelity and Papacy,” it was imperative to avoid compromises under popular pressure that would make the evangelical work dependent upon secular education. Nothing should be allowed to undermine the “daily teaching of pure Evangelical Christianity, or beget any timidity in direct labor for the conversion of pupils to Christ.” The missionary position on education had moved significantly from its conservative mid-century stance but still retained a high degree of ambivalence.73 The Marsovan missionaries, with the constant urging and support of their Armenian “brethren,” had won the day. Harbinger High School, true to its name, having in 1885 graduated its only class, of nine students, became Anatolia College in September 1886 through the initial addition of one year. It would serve as a feeder institution for the Seminary, which now conformed to the American prototype of three years given entirely to theological studies. The Armenian community achieved its objective of a full-fledged college for Marsovan and the mission station was relieved of a portion of the funding burden. If there was a cautionary note in this remarkable achievement, it was that the margin of financial support was thin and the trust of the local community always fragile. The challenge to the new institution in the years ahead would be to strengthen its foundations while also navigating the treacherous shoals of religious and ethnic rivalries in a society passing through increasing stress. The outward thrust of Western nations in the nineteenth century through the agencies of missionaries, traders, and colonial entrepreneurs produced myriad encounters with alien societies across the vast lands of the Eastern Hemisphere. In the Near East, American Protestant missionaries introduced a rival dogma embodying what they believed to be the true word of God. Their creed shared the fundamental doctrines of the traditional Christian churches of the East, but varied from them across a wide spectrum of interpretation and practices shaped over centuries by such events as the Protestant Reformation and the Puritan rebellion against established religion. Perhaps the most striking feature differentiating Protestant theology from that of the Eastern Christians was its emphasis upon direct access to God through prayer and the Scriptures, coupled with individual responsibility for relieving the burden of sin through salvation, beliefs that bore potential for provoking radical change in personal spirituality, church organization, and the social order. It was highly significant for whatever success the evangelists were to enjoy among the Eastern peoples that their theological tenets were embedded in the powerful force of Anglo-American culture. American Protestantism projected a liberating worldview that harnessed individual freedom and responsibility to the powerful influences of Western science

46

Chapter 1

and technology. The missionaries were bearers of an advanced material civilization that could not fail to draw people seeking improvement in their lives. Although it is clearly evident that evangelism was the dominant motive of foreign mission societies such as the ABCFM, that overriding goal could not help but be linked with other objectives varying in kind and degree with local circumstances and the character and temperament of the individual emissaries. All ordained ministers who had chosen a radically different profession and way of life from those of mainstream postcolonial America shared without exception the fundamental Calvinist concepts. At the same time, they exhibited a deep humanitarian concern for the peoples among whom they came to live and whom they viewed as impoverished spiritually, intellectually, and materially. Their efforts to redirect the lives of their hosts addressed both the purely religious and broader humanitarian dimensions, though with differing emphases and employing varied tactics. From among the first generations of missionaries, two distinct profiles may be discerned: the consummate evangelist preoccupied with a fear of perdition, motivated by the need to save souls through proselytism in order to save his own; and the philanthropist who sought improvement across a wide range of spiritual, ethical, intellectual, technical, and economic fields. Perhaps best illustrating the former profile was Rev. Daniel Temple, founder of the temporary Malta station (1822–1833), who passed the second half of his twenty-three year mission career in Smyrna. His correspondence reveals an individual preoccupied with concern for his soul, weighed down by a sense of sinfulness, totally enveloped by his theology: “In looking back on my own path, it seems to me to have been on the very edge of a precipice from the beginning till now, and I owe it entirely to the grace of God, that I did not long ago plunge down that fearful precipice into destruction.” In Temple’s view, children were “by nature, depraved and desperately wicked” unless saved by God’s grace. Temple wept for himself because his heart was so full of sin and for his children because they might live and die without the love of the Savior. By character introverted, at his funeral it was said by his closest friend that Temple “was always recognized as a stranger here, whose citizenship was in heaven.”74 If the otherworldly Temple illustrated one pole in missionary character and attitude, the other was surely embodied by Cyrus Hamlin, founder of Bebek Seminary and Robert College. Like Temple and most of the other early missionaries, Rev. Hamlin came from a modest agricultural family, which, however, valued learning and devoutly embraced the Protestant faith, and he became an ordained pastor. Where he departed from most of his colleagues was in temperament and originality, combining



The American Missionary Movement in Turkey (1810–1886)

47

an uninhibited willingness to take risks with rare aptitude for devising technical and organizational solutions. His personal creed was no less rooted in Calvinist precepts than that of his fellows, but it operated differently upon his emotional sensitivities. Teacher of theology, preacher, author and translator of religious texts, but also inventor, manager, and entrepreneur, Hamlin’s spiritual inspiration was informed by a strong humanitarian impetus. He brought his exceptional gifts to the service of his adopted society in a Christian spirit unimpeded by the stricter aspects of Puritan doctrine. Viewed in terms of the historical development of religious thought in America, Temple may be seen as personifying the more severe eighteenth-century Calvinism. Hamlin, entering missionary service seventeen years later and bearing the influence of recent scientific discoveries and Enlightenment thinking, placed greater trust in the possibilities of human improvement and societal reform.75 Most of the envoys sent to Turkey by the American Board fell between these two poles while combining features of both. If later generations, at a greater distance from the spirit of Puritan New England and the religious revival of the early nineteenth century, tended to strike a balance more toward the humanitarian pole stressing the inherent value of every human being, these terms of reference continue to be useful for understanding the missionaries’ outlook and their ways of coping with a rapidly changing Oriental society. It is difficult not to conclude, given the abundant evidence, that the Congregational leadership was excessively severe in its judgment of the established Armenian and Greek Churches. In pronouncing them the “decayed and corrupt Christian churches” and denigrating their leadership and practices, it failed to appreciate the role that those bodies had fulfilled for centuries under the rule of an alien conqueror. Functioning as communal societies dedicated to the survival and welfare of their members, despised minorities with few rights in Muslim society, it was inevitable that the millets would develop hierarchical structures and other characteristics of the Oriental culture of which they were a part. As an eminent scholar has observed, in order for themselves and their church to survive, “Greeks had to answer corruption with deceit, injustice by disloyalty and intrigue by counter-intrigue.” The missionaries, preoccupied with their own Calvinist interpretation of Christianity, their worldview shaped by the long religious and political evolution in England and America, posited as universal norms such principles as the separation of church and state and the democratic governance of churches, principles that were rarely to be found outside the Anglo-Saxon sphere. In their certainty of the exclusive correctness of their own creed, they made little effort to understand the crucial role played by the indigenous churches as agencies for the defense and survival of the Christian minorities. They

48

Chapter 1

also underestimated the peoples’ loyalty and strong attachment to their traditional religions. Had the evangelists been less absorbed with their own dogmas and more able to escape the bounds of their own native cultures, they might have been more successful in accomplishing their professed purpose of strengthening the ailing Oriental churches. One result of their evangelistic labors, as they themselves acknowledged, was to produce disruption in Ottoman Christian society and a religious schism resulting in the formation of a relatively few independent churches detached from their national communities.76 It was that very doctrinal fervor, however, that inspired young men and women to abandon conventional patterns of life and endure danger and hardships for long years in a benighted land. Without their unshakable certainty of purpose, the missionary movement that founded schools and hospitals and planted the seeds of progress across Turkey’s forlorn social landscape could not have issued forth.

2

} Identity and Survival Anatolia’s First Decade (1886–1895)

T

he founding of Anatolia College was both a new beginning and the culmination of events long in the making. For half a century American missionary educators had founded churches and schools throughout the Ottoman Empire. By 1886 the ABCFM maintained 409 schools enrolling over 16,000 pupils, mostly at the elementary level. In Marsovan there had been some missionary presence since 1850 and a fully active station for twenty-three years. These efforts, it is true, had won the adherence of only a small part of the local Christian society that was itself a minority. But they had gained the respect, or at least growing tolerance, of many others who remained beyond the proselytizing reach. Two decades of experience and modest growth lay behind the Theological Seminary and the Girls School. Because of the small number of Protestant churches and schools seeking pastors and teachers, the Seminary had graduated only eighty-five students by 1888. Nonetheless, it had won esteem throughout Protestant ranks in Turkey by supplying trained ministers and tutors for the slowly expanding circle of evangelical communities. In many instances, new pastors were accompanied to their village pulpits by spouses from the Marsovan Girls School ready to teach in local evangelical schools.1 The Christian communities of Marsovan and the towns and villages of its hinterland, not only Protestant but also Gregorian and a few Greek Orthodox, had demonstrated their eagerness for broader educational opportunities and their willingness to pay for them by sending their sons to the high school in the early 1880s. At the same time, there was demand for more advanced training, such as that already offered by collegiate 49

50

Chapter 2

institutions founded alongside ABCFM seminaries at Armenian centers in eastern Turkey. The Pontus Evangelistic Association, formed in 1883 to unite the churches in Marsovan’s larger region, had endorsed the upgrading of Harbinger High School and promised to meet some of its costs. The rapid rise in the high school’s enrollment during its four years of operation had shown the feasibility of a more ambitious enterprise, overcoming doubts that had forestalled the earlier collegiate initiative six years before. The high school had also paved the way in developing curriculum and teaching staff. In its first year of operation, Anatolia College simply incorporated the high school, extending it by one additional year, and awarded baccalaureate degrees to the first four graduates in 1887. The high school faculty provisionally became that of the College.2 Even though American educational efforts in Marsovan had paved its way for more than two decades, Anatolia’s founding was nonetheless a bold, and in many ways uncertain, initiative. There was no precedent in all of western Turkey for a college under Protestant missionary sponsorship. Marsovan was a remote provincial town far from the major concentrations of Armenian and Greek Christians. Although a new building constructed in 1887 provided classrooms and a dormitory for the new college, there was no assurance that resources could be secured for future buildings, equipment, and other needs. Even the ability of the institution to meet regular operating costs was doubtful. The eager, but impecunious, Armenian community could scarcely afford tuition payments in normal times and might be set back unexpectedly by natural disasters such as the famine that devastated the district in the early 1870s. From its first year, local authorities raised questions about Anatolia’s legality under Turkish law since it lacked an official permit. Moreover, the responsibilities of an institution of higher learning were obviously far greater than those of a high school. Although the title of “college,” adopted largely to please its Armenian backers but implying rough equivalence to institutions bearing that designation in America, was unlikely to be challenged initially, it was anticipated that graduates would soon seek admission to doctoral programs at American and European universities. Charles Tracy expressed concern about the College’s academic stature as perceived in America, noting that “room for improvement was the largest room in the college.”3 Anatolia thus faced a set of challenges from the outset. First, it had to secure a viable enrollment, composed as much as possible of fee-paying students. Second, it needed to assemble a stronger faculty. Since the small number of Americans at the station was responsible for the Seminary and Girls School as well as for conveying the Protestant message to other districts within the large Marsovan field, it was essential that a native faculty be trained to share teaching duties. Third, the physical plant had to be enlarged and vastly improved. Finally, to meet all the foregoing needs,



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

51

a financial infusion was essential in order to construct a larger campus, endow professorships, provide scholarships for impecunious students, and satisfy the many other requirements of a self-respecting institution. As Charles Tracy observed, “The financial condition of the college is the hardest of all its conditions.”4 The positive response from the local Christian population elicited by the high school gained further momentum after its elevation to college level. Armenian and Greek communities from the larger region surrounding Marsovan became drawn to the first such institution in their part of the Ottoman world. In its first year, Anatolia College enrolled the very satisfactory number of 130 students, of whom fifty were in the College proper and eighty in the two-year preparatory division. The great majority were boarders, mostly Armenians from interior towns such as Sivas, Cesarea, Tocat, and Yozgat, where mission high schools prepared their graduates for Anatolia. However, the student body also included twentyseven Greeks, signifying the increasing willingness of Greek families, particularly Turkish-speaking Karamanlides, to send their sons to Marsovan. The 1887 station report noted a markedly improved attitude toward the missionaries by Orthodox groups who now paid them greater respect. Beleaguered Protestant communities began to gain confidence from their connection with a school of rising prestige. Although the signs of poverty throughout the land were undoubtedly real, it was a common practice to conceal material assets so as to ward off the rapacious tax collector or other predators in a society characterized by mistrust. More families than anticipated proved able to meet the cost of tuition and board.5 The College and the Seminary were seen to be mutually supportive, the latter drawing most of its students from among Anatolia’s graduates. The most promising prospects for the ministry could be identified at an early stage and groomed for the Seminary. The moral tone in both schools was observed to be improved. The Marsovan station reported with satisfaction that in its first year, seven members of the college student body had joined the Evangelical Church. Charles Tracy wrote, “Almost every evangelical interest in our field now hangs on the College: that proves to be the handle of our sickle.” By the third year, the Board in Boston was able to pronounce that “Anatolia College has no further need to prove its right to be.”6 ANATOLIA’S FOUNDING FATHERS The small group of missionary educators and their wives who championed the movement toward an educational formula that would enlarge the scope of their mission, strengthen theological training, and satisfy the

52

Chapter 2

people’s thirst for civilizing influences were by now seasoned experts in delivering Christian instruction to the Eastern society that had become their second home. The most senior member of the team of four that led the way to Anatolia’s rise was John F. Smith, a Vermonter educated at the University of Wisconsin and Lane Seminary in Ohio. One of the missionary trio who had founded the Marsovan station in 1863, he directed the Seminary and managed the station’s finances. Charles Tracy had concentrated on the Armenian language since arriving in Marsovan in 1867, had taken charge of the high school, and was appointed to a five-year term as Anatolia’s first president. George Herrick of Vermont had completed his theological studies at Andover Seminary in 1859 and arrived the same year in Constantinople, where he mastered Turkish and prepared translations of the Gospels. He moved to Marsovan in 1870 and became an ardent advocate of establishing a college. A prolific scholar, Herrick was called back to Constantinople for extended periods to advance the publication work centered at Bible House, but also to allow his chronically ill wife access to medical treatment unavailable at Marsovan. Edward Riggs joined the station in 1876 after studies at Princeton and Union Theological Seminary and seven years of mission service at the Sivas station. Though the youngest of the Marsovan quartet, he displayed a confident familiarity with mission life from his early years in Constantinople, where his accomplished father, Elias, led the Mission’s publishing endeavors. His wife, Sarah, was also born in Turkey, daughter of Constantinople missionary H. G. O. Dwight. Edward’s subsequent language training in Greece permitted the station to conduct religious services and instruction in all three of the vernacular tongues. A vigorous preacher of strong evangelical persuasion, Riggs was closely associated with the Seminary but taught a wide range of subjects in the College as well. The fact that two of the four, Tracy and Riggs, were Presbyterians rather than Congregationalists seems to have had little bearing upon their cooperation but attested rather to the absence of sectarian preoccupation among these ABCFM emissaries.7 This small group who sustained the evangelical cause at Marsovan for decades consisted of truly exceptional men and women, even by the exacting standards of mission service. Combining determined faith with disciplined and vigorous minds, generous dispositions, hardy physical constitutions, and appetites for adventure, they remained steadfastly devoted to a purpose that the bulk of the local society found alien and often offensive. They gave their lives to that cause, without prospect of material rewards, working under the most trying circumstances, raising families in unhealthful conditions without access to adequate medical care. Their total commitment to the educational dimension of their work was dem-



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

53

onstrated in many ways, not least by the contribution of a month’s salary from each of their meager incomes for scholarship assistance to needy students in Anatolia’s first year. What modest rewards did come their way were redeemed in the inner world of faith and conscience.8 Their voluminous correspondence reveals strong-minded individuals skilled in expressing their moral certitude through cultivated and compelling prose. As a mission team the “brethren” shared preaching, teaching, and ministering to district churches and schools without the need to designate a leader among themselves. Though disagreements arose, as a rule they reached decisions through consensus. A strong bond of common cause and mutual respect and affection guided their deliberations and inspired their actions. With full confidence in their purpose, they did not shrink from addressing their supervisors in Boston in a forthright and occasionally forceful manner. In fact, the American Board delegated broad authority to its missionaries. It did so in keeping with the democratic principles of the Congregational Church, but also from necessity given the vast distance and slow communications separating them from Boston. The team’s unity of purpose, harmony, and persuasiveness, coupled with its remarkable endurance for over thirty years, weighed heavily in making remote Marsovan, rather than Constantinople, Smyrna, or other more prominent cities, the focus of Protestant missionary education in western Turkey.9 If the unity and tenacity of this missionary team were mainly responsible for overcoming formidable obstacles to the founding of the College and the continuation of the Seminary in Marsovan, they could not have achieved those goals without the ardent participation of their Armenian colleagues. The constant advocacy by local evangelicals of expanded and improved education, backed by pledges of financial support, bolstered the credibility of the missionary team’s bold initiatives in the eyes of their colleagues in the Western Turkey Mission and the Board in Boston. The leaders of the Armenian Protestants who assumed positions on Anatolia’s first Board of Managers were Professor Garabed Thoumayan, who became its first chairman, Dr. Melcon Altounian, Hagop Bedrosian, Dr. Jeremiah Altounian, and Barsam Manissadjian. Although relations with the Armenian evangelical leadership posed perennial challenges to the American missions throughout Turkey, at this stage there seems to have been better cooperation at Marsovan than at most other stations. It was partly this circumstance that prompted the Western Turkey Mission in 1889 to hold its annual meeting by exception in distant Marsovan rather than in Constantinople. Missionary leaders from all eight stations of its wide territory traveled for days to see the burgeoning new Anatolia College, with its interdependent Seminary and Girls School, where preachers, teachers, and other evangelical workers were being trained to assume posts of responsibility throughout the larger region.10

54

Chapter 2

PRESIDENT CHARLES TRACY From the time of its founding, one individual was so closely connected with Anatolia as to make its history in Ottoman Turkey and his professional biography virtually one and the same. Charles Tracy had overseen the precursor high school in 1881, was appointed president of the new college in 1886, and retired from that duty only in 1913, less than a year before the beginning of World War I. Throughout most of that time, he was primarily responsible for all aspects of Anatolia’s operation and for its survival. There can be few instances where an institution was so profoundly shaped by a single individual. Drawing upon Tracy’s writings, most notably his prolific correspondence, and the brief biography prepared by his protégé and successor, George E. White, one can discern the personal traits that shaped his work in Marsovan. Born in 1838, Tracy grew up on a frontier farm in East Smithfield, Pennsylvania, where a Spartan existence demanded self-reliance and mastery of a range of practical skills. At age fifteen he lost his mother and a few years later his father, in whom he placed great trust. Calvinism permeated the Tracy family and its farming community and Charles experienced a religious awakening in adolescence that directed him to the ministry. With little formal schooling available, the lean and vigorous lad summoned the discipline to educate himself mostly by prodigious reading while fully engaged in strenuous farm work. It proved sufficient to gain him admission at age twenty-four to Williams College from which he graduated with honors in only two years. He completed his professional training at Union Theological Seminary in New York and became an ordained minister. Tracy financed his studies through scholarships and jobs, mostly campus chores, tutoring, and working at domestic missions during vacations. In 1867 he accepted employment with the American Board and, with his bride, Myra H. Park, a schoolteacher from his home county, embarked for Turkey that same year. After several months in Constantinople studying Armenian and Turkish, they proceeded to Marsovan, which was to be their main home for forty-six years.11 One of Charles Tracy’s most striking qualities was his wide range of talents. He embraced, with the same enthusiasm, manual labor, playing a homemade violin, or penning a poem—he was elected class poet at Williams and continued to compose verse throughout his life, publishing at least two volumes of poetry. His intellectual interests ran the gamut from theology to science; at Anatolia he taught such varied subjects as religion, international law, and physics. Tracy’s wide-ranging talents, joined with uncompromising faith and abundant vitality, proved invaluable for building an institution from scratch with minimal resources. He had also gained from his hardscrabble youth a sense of the value of things that



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

55

imparted practical shrewdness to his strategies for developing Anatolia’s property and finances.12 Tracy’s relish for life and adventure lightened some of the burdens of the Puritan faith. In his published reflections on mission life, one finds occasional mention of sin and evil, but the dominant theme throughout is that of love. Doubtless, his liberal education at Williams College reinforced this predisposition. Tracy recalled the declaration by Williams’s noted educational leader, Mark Hopkins, “my grandest teacher,” that “holy love is the highest exercise of the highest powers, and is blessedness, the highest good.” From this conviction very likely stemmed Tracy’s characteristic optimism and the tenacity that sustained him in his work at Marsovan until age seventy-five, despite periodic bouts of illness and exhaustion. It is perhaps not farfetched to trace this element in Tracy’s makeup to his ability to engage and win over those who otherwise might prove antagonists. His Marsovan colleagues noted that Charles was the most liked and trusted of the missionary group by their native associates. It was Tracy who invariably took the lead in resolving thorny issues with the Ottoman authorities. His open and patently sincere manner also cemented his important relationships with the Board’s mission overseers, particularly Judson Smith, foreign secretary (1884–1906), as revealed in the frank but affectionate tone of their official correspondence.13 ASSEMBLING A FACULTY Teaching duties at the College fell mostly to the Americans and former instructors at Harbinger High School until a local faculty of quality could be assembled. The most senior “native” professor was Garabed Thoumayan, who had studied Protestant theology in Switzerland before taking up teaching duties at the Seminary in 1881 and later in the College. An influential figure in the Marsovan Armenian community, he was president of the Pontus Evangelistic Association and led that group’s efforts in support of Anatolia’s founding. Younger scholars of promise, mostly Anatolia graduates, after a trial period of teaching, were sent abroad for advanced training. Barsam Manissadjian, completing postgraduate study in Berlin in natural science, was the second Armenian professor to be appointed. Dr. Melcon Altounian taught biology and served as the College’s physician. Arakel G. Sivaslian, who had taught in the high school, was awarded a doctorate at Carleton College before returning to become professor of mathematics and astronomy, later heading the mathematics department. The linguistic diversity of the student body imposed formidable demands upon a faculty required to teach in English, Armenian, Greek, and

56

Chapter 2

Turkish. Although no significant number of Muslims attended Anatolia before 1909, Turkish was the first language for many Armenians and Greeks from villages in the interior. Students gained a solid grounding in their own vernacular while developing competency in English, the medium for most of the advanced courses. Rev. George Anastasiades, graduate (1887) of the College and Seminary, taught beginning English for the first few years. Hovannes T. Kayayan and V. Hovannes Hagopian, graduates of the Seminary, were assigned to teach Armenian and Turkish language, respectively, and soon received professorships. Hagopian had undertaken advanced study in Turkish law and literature at the Imperial Ottoman School in Constantinople, returning to become head of the Turkish Department and adviser to the College on legal matters. Demetrios Theocharides, an alumnus (1888) and evangelical, was sent to the University of Athens from which he returned in 1892 to develop the Greek department. Ioannes. P. Xenides, also a Greek evangelical who grew up in Ankara, taught at Anatolia for two years after graduating as valedictorian in 1891. He then trained at the University of Edinburgh and in Athens, joining the College and Seminary, which commonly shared faculty, as professor of philosophy and theology. By 1897 Anatolia had in place a well-trained faculty of seven Armenians and two Greeks teaching in the vernacular languages (Armenian, Greek, and Turkish), joined by Americans for English-language courses. When the need arose, teaching assignments could be given to older students in the seminary.14 George Herrick, while touring the United States in search of financial contributions (1889–1890), found a willingness on the part of kindred Protestant colleges to provide assistance. Relationships were forged in these first years that profoundly influenced Anatolia for generations. Williams College, Charles Tracy’s alma mater, considered to be the birthplace of the ABCFM, was the first American institution to donate scholarships that enabled impecunious students to attend Anatolia. Carleton College in Minnesota supported the cost of the first American tutor at Anatolia, its alumnus Henry K. Wingate, and of two young female graduates, Martha King and Frances Gage, who joined the Girls School faculty in 1893. Oberlin College was a source of teaching personnel as well as a favorite training site for the offspring of Marsovan missionary families. Iowa College, later Grinnell, became the alma mater of two future Anatolia presidents and their wives, beginning with its young graduates, George E. White and Esther Robbins White, who joined the Marsovan team in 1890. The faculties of those colleges extolled the cause of mission education and encouraged their students to contribute funds for support of Anatolia. In many respects, those church-related colleges became institutional models for the distant new offshoot of Protestant education.15



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

57

BUILDING AND FUNDING A COLLEGE While his colleagues shouldered other mission duties, including the onerous “touring” to churches and schools throughout the larger region, Charles Tracy took the lead in developing the campus. College classes initially shared the Seminary building, to which an annex had been added for the high school. Boarders were temporarily obliged to seek accommodations in the town. Tracy ingeniously devised makeshift solutions by extending and remodeling the narrow premises, pending more permanent solutions. The practical skills he had mastered while growing up on a Pennsylvania farm now proved of immense value for fashioning a campus in the face of two formidable obstacles: meager resources and the reluctance of Ottoman authorities to issue permits for acquiring land or erecting school buildings. Property had to be secured under ambiguous ownership laws and construction permits either obtained from often distant and unresponsive officials, or else circumvented somehow. Tracy was remarkably successful in cultivating friendly relations with local authorities who, though perhaps legally constrained from issuing building permits, might not object to “repairs” or “modifications.” The evolution of the campus accordingly followed a long series of creative improvisations by which modest structures were transformed in size and function, as sheds became classrooms and storerooms reappeared as dining halls. In the second year, a small dormitory was erected and the Girls School building enlarged.16 One distinct advantage was the price of land in Marsovan and the comparatively strong values of the dollar and the British pound. Astute purchases of adjoining fields and gardens steadily expanded the mission compound, which had reached about eight acres when Anatolia began classes. An offsetting disadvantage was the difficulty of negotiating property acquisitions from suspicious owners and procuring valid deeds, given the strong bias against foreigners’ ownership. Purchases for the school were therefore usually made in the name of an Armenian associate; Professor Altounian frequently filled that role and also provided legal counsel. After a purchase was made, a deed could usually be transferred to a missionary, most often Charles Tracy. John F. Smith, as mission treasurer, became expert in navigating those complex shoals to secure valid documentation of College property, aided by the indispensable counsel and influence of the U.S. Legation in Constantinople. By the end of its first decade, the College had its own classroom building and dormitory on a growing campus that also included the Girls School structure on a newly acquired site, separate buildings for preparatory students and for female orphans, three staff residences, and “Self-Help” workshops. Other

58

Chapter 2

nearby premises were leased, and there were ambitious plans for further expansion. Gardens were planted, water sources secured, and a library equipped with four thousand volumes.17 Tracy also took the lead in finding financial resources for the new college. At the outset, its means were limited to the fixed annual subsidies promised by the Board and the local community, in addition to whatever tuition fees it could collect. One of the conditions of Anatolia’s founding was its ineligibility for direct ABCFM funding beyond the stipulated annual grant and the salaries of the missionaries who added instruction to their many other duties. The Prudential Committee, acting as trustees, would hold and invest funds for the College in the United States but would not actively solicit on its behalf. The task of securing further resources was especially formidable because of Marsovan’s distance from potential sources of support in Europe and the United States. Infrequent opportunities to solicit from those sources arose mostly during the missionaries’ furloughs, normally only every ten years. Efforts by Edward Riggs in America in 1886 and George Herrick three years later in England and America yielded uneven results. As Tracy summarized the situation in the College’s third year, “this hand-to-mouth living may be endured till it can be cured; that is the utmost we can say.”18 The Tracy family’s second furlough since arriving in Marsovan twentythree years earlier began in 1890. Charles and Myra were exhausted from their labors and recurring illnesses. It required several months of rest on the family farm in Pennsylvania before Charles was able to regain strength to pursue Board duties, most notably seeking funds for Anatolia. He had no experience in soliciting, and it was not a task he relished. As Tracy confided to ABCFM Foreign Secretary Judson Smith, “Money raising is the most nerve-taxing work I ever engaged in.” Nonetheless, he pursued it with characteristic zeal, traveling through the central and western states to meet evangelical church groups. He compared the wealth of America to a “pumpkin, plump, golden and attractive, but without any stem by which to take hold.” Some notable successes materialized from this first tour, most particularly, winning the support of a Chicago philanthropist couple, Dr. and Mrs. D. K. Pearson, who, over the next several years, were to provide an important share of the funds for developing Anatolia’s campus.19 “SELF-HELP” Although reliant on tuition and fees to meet operating expenses, the College’s leaders realized that “the worthy poor often find it simply impossible to pay board and tuition.” Tracy’s austere boyhood “on that stoneburdened and thistle-cursed old farm in Pennsylvania” had deepened the



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

59

Calvinist principle of self-reliance so abundantly evident in his approach to education. One of his main goals was to enable boys lacking financial means to meet expenses through productive labor rather than outright grants, which he opposed on ethical grounds. This view was analogous to the missionary attitude toward new evangelical churches: integrity and self-respect depended upon self-support rather than charity. Echoing Cyrus Hamlin’s innovations at Bebek Seminary, Tracy solicited funds for an “industrial department” where students, often desperately impoverished, could learn carpentry, furniture making, bookbinding, tailoring, and other trades. The sale of products from those activities defrayed the cost of their studies. The moral and educational results were considered even more important than the financial: the development of “manly self-reliance,” respect for the dignity of labor, encouragement of physical activity, and cultivation of practical talents “to secure them against helplessness in everyday life and bookishness as students.” These qualities were essential for achieving a character profile that reflected the challenges and opportunities of rural America at this time as well as Puritan values. Tracy’s American colleagues shared his enthusiasm for building “manly character,” for shaping industrious, efficient individuals who “will never be troubled with the cartilaginous spine; they will never be helpless hangers-on, wearing broadcloth and asking for bread.”20 Gradually a series of workshops sprawled across the campus. Under the direction of Ghazaras Nerso, who brought experience from employment in America, the industrial department acquired a steam engine and within its first decade became partially self-sufficient from the sale of products. In later years a flour mill and bakery produced significant income. About a third of Anatolia’s students met a portion of their expenses from campus employment. Building an endowment to support the “Self-Help” operation was always near the top of the president’s funding priorities. The generosity of a pair of sisters in America, Mary and Carrie Wickes, permitted the acquisition of mechanized equipment and gave the operation the name “Wickes Industrial Self-Help.”21 AN EVANGELICAL COLLEGE In some respects the creation of a Christian college was nearly as bold an undertaking as the evangelical quest to reform people’s faiths, given the ethnic and social divisions of Ottoman society, institutionalized through separately delineated millets. Their members lived apart with their own laws and customs, interacting only for a limited range of transactions, mainly in the marketplace. Armenian and Greek minorities spoke different tongues and practiced rival variations of Christianity, and Protestant

60

Chapter 2

converts became alienated from both communities. Mission schools ignored those divisions as much as possible while seeking to bring together all those seeking a Christian education. The Marsovan missionaries had long experience in communal relations and the commingling of normally separate peoples in the Seminary, Girls School, and high school. With the founding of Anatolia, they aspired to conduct that social experiment on a larger scale, concentrating under one roof Gregorian Armenians, Orthodox Greeks, and evangelical dissenters from both groups. Not surprisingly, the issue of combining ethnic groups gave rise to differing opinions, as had been illustrated in the controversy over the retention of the Seminary at Marsovan. Edward Riggs, for example, doubting the feasibility of joining Greeks with Armenians, proposed instead a separate operation for the former somewhere on the Black Sea coast. Riggs wrote to the Board’s foreign secretary: “The depth of the prejudices on this question I can liken only to the ‘color problem’ in our own country.”22 Whatever formula for delivering instruction to multiethnic groups should prove most effective, the ultimate objective was always clear, as further articulated by Riggs. While the educational work “is certainly very prominent in the impression made upon the outside observer, and in the demands it makes on our time, yet it was organized and conducted as a means to the most effective carrying on of the direct evangelistic work, which here invites our first attention.” Charles Tracy fully agreed, expressing regret that some institutions were timid for fear of giving offense by advancing Protestant doctrines of sin and redemption. “Our college exists to convert men to Christ, and, we are most happy to say, hopeful conversions seem to be occurring every week.” The required course of study included daily Bible lessons and prayers, and students were encouraged to attend evening preaching and weekend services. The American staff reported to Boston with enthusiasm the number of their charges who opted to join the Marsovan Evangelical Church.23 The commingling of normally separate youth and the effort to guide them by evangelical precepts inevitably produced tensions within the student body, especially among the more numerous Armenians, creating discipline problems from the first years. Matters reached a climax in 1889 when the faculty expelled the son of a Gregorian priest after a quarrel with a Protestant student over religion, upon which fourteen more of the ousted student’s coreligionists left the college. Edward Riggs regarded the incident as the result of a “Satanic opposition,” but hoped the ultimate outcome “will be good in showing more clearly that this is a Protestant and a truly Christian institution.” The next few years proved calmer as a result. Extending the preparatory classes to bring students in at an earlier age, and enlarging the boarding unit so as to distance them from family and community influ-



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

61

ences, became important means for inducting youth into an evangelical collegiate culture. In its sixth year, Anatolia admitted three Turkish boys, all of whom left before the year was out. The student register records that Mahmoud Eksem from Samsun was expelled for running away after being disciplined for “beating boys and vilifying his teachers.” His younger brother also ran away at about the same time. Further efforts to attract Muslims yielded meager results until political changes in 1908 produced a new set of circumstances for a time.24 “TOURING” The scope of missionary work, encompassing the propagation of evangelical ideas and practices across the land, required the Marsovan staff to travel throughout the large and rugged territory that constituted its “field.” Their main purpose was to seed new churches that should in time become self-supporting, buttressed by schools mostly at the elementary level. The brightest prospects lay among the concentrations of Armenians and Greeks in distant towns, who also became the main source of students for Anatolia after Marsovan itself. Alumni of Anatolia and the Seminary and Girls School commonly assumed the leadership of schools and churches in those areas. Traveling to the regional outstations where new evangelical groups had already taken root, or to other promising towns and villages, was perhaps the most onerous of missionary tasks. First of all, it meant leaving the small staff at Marsovan shorthanded for teaching, preaching, and related duties in the three schools and the Evangelical Church. Absences were invariably lengthy due to the slowness of travel across the Anatolian uplands. To illustrate, before assuming direction of the high school, Charles Tracy took his family to Amasia, only twenty-four miles from Marsovan, for the entire winter, rather than travel back and forth during poor weather. Edward Riggs remained with his family for a whole season at Samsun in 1882–1883 from which he could better reach the nearby coastal towns. George White estimated one year that he was absent “touring” for 113 days.25 Whereas in Marsovan the missionaries had secured over the years a relatively stable home base by virtue of familiarity and good works among the local populace, in distant villages they came as strangers bearing a creed that threatened the established order. Efforts to plant new churches inevitably provoked angry reactions from local community leaders. As the Protestant movement gradually gained some ground in the provinces and the suspicions of Ottoman authorities eased, missionary visits became less likely to incite violent encounters. Nevertheless, Edward Riggs

62

Chapter 2

in 1888 was imprisoned for nearly a month at Phatsa for traveling without the police permit required for movement across district borders. Converts from among the local Christians who actively pursued evangelical objectives were even more vulnerable to sanctions.26 The Marsovan team endeavored to visit every outstation at least once a year to preach in the churches, counsel local evangelicals, and encourage educational projects. Travel was most often by packhorses or mules over rough caravan trails. In the 1880s, new macadamized surfaces between Marsovan and Amasia reduced travel time to five hours by horse-drawn wagon. Routes to most other districts continued to require hazardous plodding for up to five days by horseback through gullies, forests, and marshes and the fording of sometimes torrential rivers and evening repose in stables or open fields.27 All travelers faced the danger of brigands, whose numbers had increased following the penetration of Russian forces into areas bordering the Black Sea to the north and east. In the 1870s Muslim refugees from those regions flooded northern Turkey, swelling the ranks of unemployed Georgians and Circassians and increasing the number of robbers along unprotected routes. There had been no fatal attacks on missionaries since 1862, but in 1880 Justin W. Parsons was murdered in western Turkey. The previous year Julius Leonard from Marsovan, accompanied by Eliza Fritcher of the Girls School, was thrown from his horse by Circassians and robbed on the way to Samsun. In 1883 Edward Riggs was assaulted while traveling with his family, while two years later, Marsovan missionary John Smith, his wife, and Mary Wright, on her way to join the Girls School, were robbed of all their possessions by four Circassians on the road from Tocat.28 Despite its many hazards, delivering the Protestant message to remote corners of the mission field remained an essential part of missionary work and yielded some of its greatest satisfaction. Most towns and villages were less healthful places than Marsovan and even poorer. Their travels revealed to the missionaries the severely impoverished state of Ottoman rural society. They found entire families inhabiting one-room windowless hovels of mud brick without furnishings other than sleeping mats spread around a crude fireplace from which smoke partially escaped through a roof vent. Such homes, where itinerant evangelists frequently accepted hospitality, were as devoid of hygiene as they were rich in vermin. Lack of technical knowledge and means left crops vulnerable to the forces of nature; floods, droughts and pests defeated the peasantry’s hardiest efforts. Any rare surplus in yields became the target of the tax collector. Christian families were compelled to pay heavier taxes since they were excluded from military conscription. Many of the first evangelical churches and schools were housed in makeshift shanties scarcely roomier



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

63

than the village huts. Winning adherents to their faith among such benighted communities, bringing their children to study in Marsovan, and nurturing their moral and material betterment brought great satisfaction to the Marsovan emissaries. Their visits to remote communities also made them exceptionally knowledgeable about the circumstances of rural Ottoman society.29 Field duty was particularly onerous for females, whether mission wives or single women assigned to the station. Nevertheless, they shared those tasks, riding by horseback over forbidding terrain, eluding brigands, and often sleeping in stables warmed only by the body heat of animals. In one year, three female missionaries at the Girls School traveled over nine hundred miles. Eclipsing all discomforts was the comradeship of evangelical friends always eager to tax their modest means to provide hospitality.30 “WOMEN’S WORK” Delivering missionary education to females was of the highest significance precisely because of their deplorable status in Ottoman society. Whereas the entire rural population suffered from ignorance and material want, the missionaries observed women and girls treated as servants for the convenience of men. They were commonly objects of contempt, illiterate from being denied education, and obliged to marry in early adolescence with no voice in the selection of mate. Young wives, frequently subject to abusive dominance by husband and in-laws, were commonly denied permission to speak to anyone but the husband until after the birth of the first child. The Eastern family, based upon female submission, appeared to the missionaries as a grotesque distortion of domestic relationships and ranked high among their priorities for reform. The consequences flowing from the introduction of women’s education could be profound for reshaping the behavior of mothers and the character of home life. As Charles Tracy averred, “With the education of women, humanity at once has two feet to walk on where formerly it hobbled on one.”31 Given the social segregation of the sexes, access to the female population was possible for women missionaries only. One male missionary, after thirty-one years’ residence in eastern Turkey, remarked that he had yet to speak to a respectable Turkish woman or to see her face. George and Esther White, after twenty years in Marsovan, had never called at a Turkish home together. Women from traditional Christian families were scarcely less remote. However, conditions at Marsovan were observed to be less confined than in Armenian centers of eastern Turkey; women were somewhat less restricted and relations between Christians and Muslims seemed friendlier, especially because Armenians there spoke Turkish.

64

Chapter 2

Still, there was perforce a rigid separation by gender that weighed upon all attempts at female enlightenment.32 Only very gradually did a few of the first evangelical families overcome the universal resistance to female education and begin to send their daughters to the Girls Boarding School. As the results became manifest, girls began to arrive from a wider geographical range. The curriculum, originally focused on Gospel study, native languages, and home economics, was gradually broadened into a secondary-level program that by the 1890s included mathematics, natural sciences, geography, history, philosophy, literature, psychology, and music. Classes were conducted mostly in English, but all students pursued mastery of their vernacular language and also of Turkish. Though employment for women was virtually nonexistent in Ottoman society, the missionary organization created some opportunities for teachers, nurses, and assistants in its field operations. Although the Girls School, like the Seminary, was formally separate from Anatolia College, all three operated as complementary institutions under the leadership of the Marsovan station. On the other hand, given the rigid gender boundaries in Ottoman society, their constituencies were entirely different. Male and female missionary educators moved in separate orbits that rarely intersected. The founding director of the Girls School, Eliza Fritcher, oversaw its development for twenty-nine years, despite chronically poor health. This pioneer in female education in Turkey was succeeded as principal in 1893 by Frances C. Gage, a graduate of Carleton College, who was followed in 1898 by the forceful Charlotte Willard. Anna Bedrosian-Felician, described as the most influential native woman in the city, proved adept at bridging the cultural divide between Armenians and Americans while serving as teacher and counselor for fifty years. By 1897, the Girls School’s enrollment had risen to 127 and its teaching staff to eleven.33 In dedicating their lives to mission work, women such as Fritcher and Willard made far greater personal sacrifices than the men, who were married and accompanied by their families. In forsaking motherhood, the female missionary “becomes the mother of a nation, in the truest, best sense. Her pupils will remember her as such, and impart the influence received from her to their children and their children’s children, or to multitudes whose instructors they may become.” Such exceptional individuals undertook the management and teaching duties in mission girls schools, assisted by trained native staff. The formation of women’s mission associations in the United States after the Civil War provided funding and personnel to enlarge this essential dimension of missionary education. Congregational Church Women’s Boards, chartered as corporate bodies in affiliation with the ABCFM, first in Massachusetts (1868) and later in Illinois and California, directed



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

65

their efforts specifically to the betterment of females worldwide. They recruited American women for appointment by the American Board and funded their work. By the early 1900s the Women’s Boards of Missions provided almost one-third of the American Board’s financial means. Like their male counterparts, women drawn to mission service tended to be of the lower middle class, often from farm communities. Not surprisingly, a high proportion of recruits came from missionary families. Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in Massachusetts became the preeminent training center for Congregational women who embraced the evangelical cause and prepared for mission careers; 187 Mount Holyoke alumnae had entered missionary service by 1887, most of whom served with the ABCFM. Their purpose was nothing less than to reshape the character of womanhood in benighted societies through Protestant formulas emphasizing mental development, community leadership, domestic management, and an ennobling concept of motherhood.34 Missionary wives performed a variety of services for the evangelical community in addition to running their households, raising children, and often providing board for single members of the station staff. Myra Tracy organized classes in her home and oversaw the girls orphanage. Sarah Riggs ministered to Marsovan women, directed the first “Home” for younger male boarders, and oversaw a Sunday school enrolling two hundred. Other spouses organized informal groups for prayer and instruction while perennially caring for the ill. The missionary home, always open to visitors, could be a powerful civilizing force through its order and cleanliness and the interpersonal values demonstrated among family members. Missionary wives were more readily accepted than their single sisters into local homes, where they encouraged women to learn to read and enlightened them in matters of health and hygiene while also delivering moral and spiritual messages. In their determined efforts to shape character, the missionary educators, men and women, emphasized principles of gender and family that accorded far greater regard for the inherent worth of females than did Ottoman society.35 This did not mean, however, that gender distinctions were insignificant in the missionary organization itself, as demonstrated by the management of their field operations. Every station was governed, under the general mandate of the Board, by the ordained missionaries assigned to it, each of whom enjoyed an equal voice in decision making. Only men could be ordained. Women trained for evangelical work were appointed as assistant missionaries who might assume managerial roles in girls schools but were excluded from the stations’ governing councils that oversaw those schools. The number of single women teachers increased in the last decades of the nineteenth century, and at many missions they outnumbered the ordained missionaries; when joined with missionary

66

Chapter 2

wives who labored incessantly for their shared goals, female evangelists became a majority among the Americans at most every station.36 The numerical predominance of females, mostly of exceptionally strong character to have chosen mission work with its many hazards, combined with changing social values in the United States, widened the role of women in mission affairs. Through initiatives taken by female missionaries in Constantinople, the Western Turkey Mission in the mid-1890s came to conform to a wider movement within the ABCFM according more equal representation to women in decision making. No indication has been found that gender issues were a serious concern in Marsovan. The explanation may lie partly in the character of the staff assigned there, although a major factor was surely the sharp delineation of the female sphere within Turkish provincial society. Women by necessity managed the Girls School and related activities with a large measure of autonomy, though under the formal direction of their male colleagues.37 A distinctive culture took shape within the Protestant educational community at Marsovan during these years. Centering on the missionaries and their families, it encompassed Armenian and Greek colleagues, boarding students, and to some extent, members of the local evangelical church. The expansion of the schools and of the evangelical community brought a sense of confidence and optimism. Camaraderie among participants in these ventures became evident in their eagerness to join the frequent celebrations, picnics, and excursions and in their enthusiasm for riding out of town to welcome to their circle new arrivals descending wearily from the mountain passes. Charles Tracy captured this spirit in his intimate description of life at Marsovan written, significantly, just before the outbreak of violence in 1893. The bonds formed between the close-knit mission families and “native friends” through their joint labors brought “such comfort as our friends at home can hardly comprehend.” The inspiring quality of life at Anatolia was evidenced in the tendency of missionary children who grew up there to follow their parents’ calling and to intermarry with the offspring of other mission families, even more often, it seems, than at other stations. It should be noted, though, that a fine line separated the Americans from the local population. Marriage between missionaries or their children and natives, even fellow evangelicals, was unheard of at Marsovan and extremely rare at other posts in Turkey.38 By the early 1890s, the missionary leadership had grayed considerately. John Smith was nearing thirty years of service at Marsovan. He had lost his first wife to the fevers that racked the region, and in 1892 his elder daughter, Bertha, who had returned three years earlier to teach in the Girls School, died of typhoid. George Herrick, who had been even longer in Turkey but divided his years between Marsovan and scriptural



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

67

translating duties in Constantinople, assumed the Anatolia directorship in 1890 to complete Charles Tracy’s five-year term when the latter left on furlough. He was reappointed to a full term in 1891 when it was uncertain whether Tracy would regain his health enough to return. Mrs. Herrick, herself enfeebled, remained abroad caring for their invalid child. Charles and Myra Tracy’s most immediate concern upon taking leave in 1890 was to recover their health. The Tracys lost their first three children, and later a fourth from a total of eight, to illnesses in the absence of a professionally trained physician. The fourth and youngest member of Anatolia’s founding quartet, Edward Riggs, had worked more than twenty years in Turkey, most of that time at Marsovan. Joining this group of ordained ministers ranging in age from late forties to three-score was the much younger George E. White, who was born in 1861 in Marash, Turkey, of missionary parents and had spent most of his youth in an Iowa farming community. After completing studies at Grinnell College and the Chicago Theological Seminary, Rev. White served as pastor in a Congregational Church in Waverly, Iowa, for three years before taking up residence at Marsovan in 1890 with wife Esther and daughter Margaret to begin the study of Turkish. The four founders could deservedly take pride in their accomplishments. Anatolia College had achieved a steadily growing enrollment, had secured an able faculty, and was slowly amassing an endowment. It provided well-trained candidates for the Seminary and also sent its graduates to teach in mission-sponsored schools throughout the Marsovan field and beyond. The College was referred to as “the eye of the mission.” Its official seal depicted the sunrise over Ak Dagh (White Mountain), as viewed from the College entrance, and bore the hopeful motto: “The Morning Cometh.” The number of Protestants recorded in their jurisdiction had increased from 272 in 1865 to over 3,000 by 1890. The work begun at Marsovan forty years before seemed to be prospering in all respects. Its protagonists could have had little inkling that the events of the next few years would shake their undertaking to its foundations and put every one of them to the severest test. To understand the crisis that assailed the Marsovan station in the mid-1890s, it is necessary to consider the deepening rift between the Christian minorities in Turkey and the Ottoman state, and how that conflict impinged upon the fledgling college.39 COMMUNAL STRESS AND MOUNTING TENSIONS The formula adopted by the Ottoman conquerors of incorporating the ethno-religious groups that fell under their rule into self-contained communities, or millets, provided stability of a kind so long as imperial power

68

Chapter 2

remained firm internally and abroad. However, their very separateness under their own civil codes and religious hierarchies served to prevent the assimilation of the minority peoples into mainstream Ottoman society. The millets remained closed and subordinate communal units, separated by religion and customs alien to and scorned by the Muslim majority. Under such circumstances, the Christian minorities developed little sense of attachment or loyalty to the Ottoman state. On the contrary, many Christians came to look abroad for deliverance from what they considered to be oppressive rule by a despised conqueror. The government’s sporadic efforts at political reform in the nineteenth century proved inadequate and were opposed by many Muslims. Meanwhile, concepts of popular governance mixed with nationalist ideology flowing from Europe rendered Turkey’s millet system increasingly anachronistic. Expectations by the minority peoples soared as the Christian powers steadily encroached upon the vast but poorly governed and defended empire, a long process that gained momentum in the later years of the nineteenth century. Nationalist uprisings among Christian peoples in the Balkans, aided increasingly by European powers seeking advantages for themselves, spurred the empire’s contraction. The formation of a series of small Christian entities endowed with varying degrees of autonomy by international treaties under European hegemony eroded its western frontier. The most significant encroachment upon Turkey’s European domains followed its defeat by Russia in 1878 when the Treaty of Berlin and related accords granted full independence to Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania; placed Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austrian administration; extended the territory of the small Greek state, at Turkey’s expense (1881); and initiated a series of steps leading to Bulgarian independence. On its eastern border, Turkey was compelled under the same treaty to cede to Russia the districts of Batum, Kars, and Ardahan, each with a significant Armenian population. Meanwhile, to the south, the Ottomans suffered the effective loss of Egypt and Cyprus to Britain and Tunis to France.40 These events could not fail to stir anticipation among Turkey’s remaining Christian subjects for changes in their circumstances as well. Nationalist fervor became an infectious force that, however, affected different groups in diverse ways. The Greek Orthodox inhabitants of Asia Minor mostly looked to the national state established in 1832 across the Aegean Sea for their eventual liberation. Greece’s well-publicized irredentist ambitions toward Ottoman territory inspired in the minds of Turkey’s Hellenic subjects scenarios ranging from the forcible recovery by Athens of ancestral lands to an internal assumption of control over moribund Ottoman institutions by local Greek elites. Greeks scattered throughout the empire reacted in varying ways to the siren call of Hellenic nationalism, depending upon their location and circumstances. Many, however,



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

69

remained mindful of their time-tested accommodation to the dominant Muslim order, their vulnerability before the power of the Ottoman state, and the great uncertainty entering their lives from the fast-moving political currents that wracked the empire. At the same time, the unity of the Orthodox Church came under attack by non-Hellenic elements, chiefly in the Balkans. It suffered a major loss in 1870 when the establishment of a Bulgarian Exarchate removed the Bulgarian people from the ecclesiastical authority of the Greek Patriarchate. As the Patriarchate became enmeshed in these conflicting currents, it maneuvered to sustain its ecumenical authority in the face of aggressive nationalism by ethnically diverse constituents and growing mistrust by the Ottoman state upon which its legal existence depended.41 The Armenian minority, on the other hand, lacked not only the advantage of a kindred state outside the Ottoman Empire but even a welldefined homeland or a concentrated population. Its people were scattered across Asia Minor and beyond, rarely constituting a majority in any large area. The Gregorian Church provided the only institutional force working for unity but lacked any effective political dimension and was weakened by defections to Catholicism, Protestantism, and new socialist and anarchist movements disdaining all religion. Despite these disadvantages, many Armenians shared the rising hope for liberation in some form from the injustices they bore under Ottoman rule. A cultural revival in the nineteenth century among Armenian urban circles, both within the empire and in expatriate enclaves abroad, had infused these communities with ideals of the European Enlightenment and invigorated their national consciousness. Many Armenians now looked to Turkey’s Christian rivals for their emancipation, particularly to Russia, whose designs upon Ottoman territory were most assertive and where the largest Armenian element beyond Ottoman borders resided. Armenian generals had led Russian forces, including Armenian volunteers, to victory on the Caucasian front in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–1878. Armenians anticipated further Tsarist initiatives to liberate those of their countrymen still under Turkish rule. These expectations were inflated by a clause in the Treaty of Berlin (1878) requiring the Ottoman government to enact reforms in the governance of the Armenian population in its eastern provinces. Although that provision proved to be a false promise since the Western powers took no effective action for its enforcement, it kept alive the belief by many Armenians that foreign intervention could be anticipated, given sufficient provocation. One consequence of these rising expectations was the formation of clandestine revolutionary movements by Armenians in Russia’s neighboring provinces, in Persia, and in several European cities. The Hunchakian Revolutionary Party and other groups developed links with

70

Chapter 2

kindred elements within Turkey, including Sivas province and its Marsovan district. Given its weakness in numbers and arms against imperial forces, the movement’s common strategy became spectacular attacks against Ottoman authority designed to provoke reprisals by the heavyhanded regime. It was anticipated that harsh retaliatory measures by the Turks might trigger Great Power intervention to establish Armenian autonomy. The recent example of the European states reacting to Ottoman brutality against Bulgarian nationalists by compelling the Sultan to yield partial autonomy provided a powerful rationale for that strategy. Other Armenians, given to less violent solutions, entertained hopes that the Turkish state would either initiate reforms itself or simply collapse from internal weakness. Not a few undertook to escape the mounting crisis through emigration. Tens of thousands of Armenians departed for the United States alone before World War I. There was no serious prospect of making common cause with the Greek minority, given the two communities’ religious and cultural separation, their traditional rivalry for commercial and administrative advantages, and their essentially differing circumstances. In all these responses to an increasingly ominous situation, Armenians sought the aid and support of Westerners who represented, in their eyes, access to improved political and material prospects. These potential supporters included American missionaries residing in their midst.42 As the Ottoman state sought to halt the loss of largely Christianpeopled territories on the Empire’s periphery, it became increasingly concerned about the perceived threat from restive minorities in its Asia Minor heartland. It had ample reason to suspect that the Christian states that had abetted breakaway movements among their coreligionists in southeastern Europe would encourage similar attempts within the Empire’s core regions. The article of the Treaty of Berlin placing Turkey’s Armenian subjects under Western custodianship, though ultimately unenforced, confirmed that supposition even as it outraged Turkish Muslims. Resentment mounted against that infidel group that had dared to appeal to the Russian foe for assistance, had sent an independent delegation to the Congress of Berlin, and had formed anti-Ottoman cells in foreign lands. In the eyes of much of the Muslim public, the Armenian people were revealed as treasonous, even though most Ottoman Armenians had no involvement in such actions. Oppressive measures against this minority intensified.43 Westerners residing within the empire were viewed with mounting wariness as sources of discord. A besieged Ottoman state had been compelled to extend humiliating extraterritorial privileges, including commercial concessions and legal immunities, to a widening range of foreign residents whose activities, as a result, lay essentially beyond the country’s



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

71

legal authority. The centuries-old practice of Capitulations served in an earlier era to legitimize the presence of foreigners, particularly merchant traders, who could not be accommodated under Muslim law because of their heterodox religious status. By this time, however, these codes had evolved under the importunities of rival states into a legal preserve where foreign residents, including even Ottoman subjects naturalized abroad, could pursue activities without giving account to the country’s authorities. The United States, a late arrival to Near Eastern competition, had secured equivalent privileges for its citizens under a favored-nation clause of the Treaty of Commerce and Amity concluded with the Empire in 1831. The scores of American missionaries scattered throughout the land, thereby enjoying the protection of extraterritorial rights placing them outside Ottoman law, worked closely with the increasingly disaffected Christian minorities. Some missionaries had openly favored autonomy for the Bulgarians, as had American public opinion in general. Ottoman authorities found abundant evidence of disdain for the Muslim religion and hostility toward the empire in American Board publications intended for the American public. They easily concluded that the missionaries nurtured the spread of seditious behavior among their Armenian and Greek ministrants. Charles Tracy wrote to the ABCFM Foreign Secretary at this time, “The Mohammedan system has begun to crack down under the tremendous force of our missionary system, and the Turks are disturbed. Yet our aim is to build up, not to destroy.”44 Under the long and determined rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876– 1909), the state made concerted efforts to strengthen its administrative apparatus and bring under tighter control the disparate elements within its still vast but ineffectively governed realm. While seeking to stem the erosive tide and buttress the empire’s sagging defenses, the regime moved away from the balance that had supported, however imperfectly, a multiethnic society. It came to embrace increasingly the model, so amply demonstrated by the renegade Christian countries along its shrunken borders, of the national state based upon a single ethno-religious identity, real or imagined. Its measures included the strengthening of Muslim education and efforts to check the further spread of Christian schools in Turkey through licensing and other restrictions. An inspectorate of non-Muslim and foreign schools was established in 1887, one year after Anatolia’s founding. The U.S. Legation, following its common practice of invoking rights conferred by the Capitulations, intervened with the Ministry of Public Instruction to secure assurances that missionary schools would not be troubled, providing their courses and books met legal requirements. Christian institutions came to be viewed by many Turks as nests of subversion against the Ottoman state and the Muslim religion that could serve as pretexts for foreign intervention.45

72

Chapter 2

A COLLEGE “OF THE PEOPLE” In the provincial town of Marsovan, increasing tensions between the Christian communities and Turkish officialdom produced consequences for Anatolia’s relations with both sides. The school’s missionary founders and the local Armenians had perceived in the early 1880s a common ground for their respective interests. The missionaries’ goal had always been to advance the evangelical quest by multiplying the number of Protestant churches and widening the circle of committed followers. The essential precondition for achieving that purpose was a stalwart corps of local leaders who could nourish and expand evangelical groups. The new college was a means of broadening missionary access to the Christian population, bringing more youth for instruction, channeling more and better-prepared acolytes to the Seminary, and producing trained leaders for a steadily expanding evangelical movement. The Armenians of Marsovan, on the other hand, saw the missionaries as bearers of a Western culture affording opportunities for them to rise above their oppressive misery through education, employment, or emigration. They could not fail to be impressed by the missionaries’ standard of living, which, though modest enough by Western measures, was vastly superior to their own. No less important, they viewed them as figures of influence beyond the reach of Ottoman law, closely aligned with the American and European diplomatic legations in Constantinople, and capable of promoting political reform within Turkey and drawing material resources from the West. The new college represented for them an assurance that Western influence in Marsovan, a protective link with America and Europe, would remain and expand. Armenian youth could learn English, thereby gaining opportunities for employment in Turkey’s larger cities or for beginning a new life abroad. At the time of Anatolia’s founding, therefore, both parties to that accomplishment, Armenians and missionaries, could wholeheartedly subscribe to the succinct formulation by the Pontus Evangelistic Association of their common goal: “the lifting up of a nation by means of the Gospel.”46 However, another important factor had contributed to the understanding between the missionaries and the Armenian evangelical community that enabled the Marsovan station to win the American Board’s support for founding Anatolia. The Armenians had pledged a financial contribution that was not only significant for sustaining the new enterprise but, even more important, proof of their commitment to it. Accompanying that pledge was an expectation on the Armenian side that the new institution would eventually pass to Armenian management and ownership. The missionaries had encouraged that expectation and the Board in Boston had seemingly acceded to it. But following the initial wave of



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

73

enthusiasm, it became apparent that there was less than full agreement about the future control of the College. The proposal advanced in 1885 by the evangelical communities of the Marsovan region for a new institution to be called “Anatolia College” had included a “constitution.” That document described the American Board and the Armenian sponsors as “joint founders.” The Board’s executive organ, the Prudential Committee, should exercise the responsibilities of trustees and administer the future endowment. As to the College’s local administration, missionaries and resident evangelicals should initially share equal representation on a Board of Managers whose president must be a native. The managers should have charge of all administrative, financial, and external affairs of the College, except those expressly assigned by the constitution to the trustees. They would appoint the college director and faculty, subject to approval by the trustees. The provision that posed the greatest potential for controversy was that after twenty years a transition to indigenous control of the Board of Managers should begin, to be completed over the following twenty years according to a specific timetable.47 The Armenians’ anticipation of gradually assuming management of the College seemed, from their perspective, to be fully in accord with established mission practice. Certainly it was the highest goal of the ABCFM that, after founding, evangelical churches and schools should pass under the full responsibility of their local constituents. Precedents favoring shared institutional governance were at hand in recent decisions by the Western Turkish Mission, following intervention by the American Board in the Mission’s dispute with the Bithynian churches, to conduct mission operations through joint councils of Americans and “native brothers.” The formation of the Pontus Evangelistic Association in 1883 under the presidency of Garabed Thoumayan was intended to implement in the Marsovan district the new mission policy of conferring authority upon local evangelical leaders. Moreover, the design for a higher school that would represent and ultimately belong to the local Protestant community followed the examples of Central Turkey College in Aintab and Armenian (later Euphrates) College at Harput a decade earlier. The Marsovan missionaries themselves assumed that the same principle would apply also to this new institution. Charles Tracy and his colleagues proudly referred to a college “of the people,” and urged the Prudential Committee not to forfeit the trust of the indigenous communities by disappointing them.48 Decisions by the ABCFM leadership beginning in the 1870s to authorize the establishment of a very few Protestant colleges of a partly secular character and to extend them financial support had represented a sharp departure from earlier practice. Those moves signaled a reversal of the Board’s mid-century reserve that had resulted in Robert College, for

74

Chapter 2

example, being established outside missionary auspices, while raising new questions of legal and financial responsibility. To what extent might an American organization committed first and foremost to evangelization legitimately extend its activities to non-theological education and allocate the donations of its supporting churches for that purpose? Having clearly adopted a larger view of mission responsibilities than its predecessors when authorizing the founding of Central Turkey College and Euphrates College in the 1870s, the Board’s leaders could not easily deny the insistent request by the Western Turkish Mission to allow a similar initiative in what had become the most significant of all the ABCFM’s foreign missions, absorbing one-third of its funds and engaging a third of its emissaries. The Board yielded to the entreaties of its Marsovan envoys largely because of their proven success in founding churches, winning converts and enlisting the enthusiastic cooperation of local Armenians at a time when efforts elsewhere in western Turkey lagged. However, it still had to weigh carefully the form and degree of its new undertaking.49 Under solemn obligation to its American constituents whose support made mission work possible, the Board was reluctant to make a firm commitment to relinquish ownership of the new institution in which it had agreed to invest significantly until it could be more assured of the wisdom of such an arrangement. Its experience with indigenous peoples worldwide, including the checkered relations between missionaries and Armenians at the several stations in Turkey, impelled it to employ caution. The Prudential Committee therefore amended the proposed constitution in July 1886, shortly before Anatolia began operation. It accepted in principle the major provisions, approximating those of Central Turkey College, except that Anatolia was placed under the direct supervision of the Prudential Committee itself, acting as trustees, rather than under a separate board. However, while assenting to an eventual transfer of local management to “native bodies,” the Committee demurred at setting a precise schedule for local evangelicals to replace Americans on the Board of Managers, given the uncertain social and political circumstances in Turkey. Significantly, the title to College property would remain with the American Board “till such time as it may seem wise to pass over the Institution with all appertaining thereto to native hands.” In the meantime, the Board would allow the College to share in the use of station facilities belonging to the Seminary and would permit its four salaried missionaries to undertake teaching duties in addition to their primary mission responsibilities. Furthermore, it agreed to establish the equivalent of an initial endowment in the form of an annual grant in the amount of $1,200, the estimated income from a capital figure of approximately $20,000. An equivalent amount, the remainder of the $40,000 requested in the Armenians’ original proposal as the American contribution, was left to



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

75

be raised by solicitations. The Committee emphasized, as a condition for sustaining its annual grant, the fulfillment of the promised contribution of not less than 1,000 Turkish pounds (about $4,400) by the local community.50 The Armenian community could only be disappointed by this sharp departure from its original agreement. Its spokesman, Garabed Thoumayan, acceded to the revisions to the “constitution” decided in Boston but sought clarification about the College’s eventual transfer to local evangelical control. As the gap in interpretation between the two sides became increasingly evident, the mission team, anxious that the compact underpinning the College should not collapse, appealed to the Prudential Committee to reconfirm the earlier expectations. In order to “let our native friends feel that they are trusted,” they requested confirmation that the Committee “intended and expected to commit the institution, at least its local management, to native hands within a period not exceeding fifty years.” They recognized that the Committee stood “between two fires,” the sponsoring churches in America and the missions. “In like manner we stand between two fires, viz. the limitations under which we know the Committee must act, and native pressure, coupled with the growing needs of the enterprise undertaken.”51 In the actual management of the College, the principle of cooperation was adopted from the outset, with the “native brethren” having equal representation on the Board of Managers and a majority of votes on the faculty. If some basic questions remained unresolved at this point, when the concept of the new college was still taking shape in the minds of its founders, that could not dampen the enthusiasm on all sides. It seems unlikely that any of those prepared to make sacrifices to move the new venture forward would have taken exception to the larger purpose expressed by Edward Riggs: “that which every missionary regards as the true and permanent result of these efforts, namely, the moral influence which has permeated the mass of the people, stimulating them to intelligent efforts for their own reformation, and rousing an almost universal desire for something higher and better than they had before, in religion, literature, and education.”52 From Anatolia’s first years, the Armenian community experienced difficulty in meeting its financial commitment, even while following the Prudential Committee’s example by paying not the full capital sum pledged but only the annual interest on that amount, estimated at sixty Turkish pounds or about $260. As the station treasurer John Smith noted, the extreme poverty in the region made even this amount formidable. In the first year of high expectations, the local evangelists not only raised the promised sum but also succeeded in providing the College with an even larger amount as a loan to build an urgently needed dormitory. In

76

Chapter 2

subsequent years, however, collection became more difficult, due in part to a famine in 1887 but also to the appointment of a new pastor to the Marsovan Evangelical Church, who promoted the construction of a new church ahead of support for the College. To compel payment, Treasurer Smith set it as a condition for disbursing teachers’ salaries. As enrollment levels and income from tuition and boarding fees came to exceed expectations and relieve to some extent concerns about the College’s financial viability, the missionaries began to wonder whether it might not be preferable to forgo the local contribution, which amounted to only one-twentieth of the College’s annual expenses, and thereby be relieved of their corresponding concessions in management. However, they were loath to jeopardize the valued collaboration of their Armenian colleagues on the Board of Managers and the influence the latter exercised within the community. George Herrick wrote in 1889 that both sides were working at the “somewhat delicate matter” with results “full of the best promise.” John Smith in 1890 assured the Board that the local partners had managed to meet their financial obligation every year.53 Cooperation with the Armenian leaders, however, became increasingly problematic as nationalist aspirations mounted among the local Christian population against a background of heightened political tensions throughout the country. Relations between the missionaries and Armenian members of the Board of Managers reached a crisis over the ownership and management of a projected hospital to be funded by an English benefactress, Ann Marston, whom George Herrick had met. Whereas the Americans intended the hospital to operate as a division of the College, and offered the Armenians participation in its supervision, the latter insisted that the anticipated donation should be used instead to expand a small hospital established through foreign assistance by Mrs. Thoumayan, wife of the local Board’s chairman. When the potential donor eventually withdrew from the venture, the Armenian protagonists, led by Professor Thoumayan, expressed indignation and renounced any further responsibility for sharing in the College’s financial support. Their correspondence with their American colleagues on this occasion revealed accumulated grievances. The missionaries did not trust their native brethren but insisted upon imposing their own will. “While the money and the power is [sic] in your hands the natives are of no account.” No church was allowed to do any independent work without missionary instruction or consent. “The sole reason why the work of the missionaries is not as fruitful as has been expected is that they have failed to win the hearts of the natives.” The College had become a rival to native undertakings.54 The extent to which mutual commitment to the common endeavor had deteriorated in only a few years became evident in a remarkable statement penned by Charles Tracy in the spring of 1892 during his furlough



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

77

in the United States. Entitled “Cooperation in Anatolia College, Facts Concerning the Past and Present,” it reviewed the relationship between the missionaries and the Armenian community from the point of view of the former. Although the College had been organized on the principle of cooperation, and applied that principle to its management, from the very beginning there had developed on the Armenian side an exclusively “national spirit,” a determination to make the College their own within a limited number of years. Whereas the missionary goal was an evangelical college for all nationalities, they insisted on a strictly Armenian institution and were resistant to any Greek influence. While the missionaries expected that time and experience would foster cooperation in the new institution, instead “nationalism has become more intense and narrow” among both Armenians and Greeks. We cannot agree with them. They want the narrow; we want the broad. They wish to make such institutions exclusive, or nearly so; we wish to make them inclusive giving equal opportunity to all. They will not work and sacrifice for an institution which has a wide and general character. They are not at all satisfied with saying: “It is ours as evangelical Christians.” They must say: “It is ours as Armenians, ours as Greeks, ours as Bulgarians.” Education, culture, religion are with them, national bonds, or means of strengthening those bonds. The ultimate thing is, power on earth, rather than the Kingdom of God.

Aggravating the situation further, in Tracy’s view, was narrow ambition, “the thirst for personal aggrandizement” among a small number who held the management of local Christian institutions. Tracy deplored their constant quest for foreign assistance rather than adhering to the missionary principle of self-support. The quarrel over the hospital had precipitated, under Thoumayan’s influence, the repudiation by the Marsovan people of any responsibility for funding the College, in effect meaning “they have withdrawn from the contract of cooperation.” At this critical juncture, Tracy could see no solution for Anatolia other than to go forward independently on the strength of its American resources and leadership. There was no question of giving up the College. “The cause and the College have become one. With the College wrecked, I would no more think of returning to that field, than I would think of going to sea in a water-logged vessel. The interests of Christ’s kingdom in that region are identified with that institution.” The other alternatives, to either “Armenianize” it or turn it over to native Christian management, were unacceptable. The latter would be like “turning over the management of the firm to boys fourteen years old,” and a confession of failure. In retrospect, it had been an error to make such “extravagant and needless concessions” to the local Christians, granting them an equal share in

78

Chapter 2

management in exchange for a very minor monetary contribution. “We threw ourselves into the arms of the brethren with too much confidence.” Even if they were to reverse their position and meet the original monetary obligation, it was doubtful whether the earlier arrangement should any longer be accepted. Tracy concluded by appealing to the Prudential Committee as trustees of Anatolia College to guarantee the continuance of its annual grant unilaterally, despite this turn of events, until a separate endowment could be secured.55 The pronounced change in Tracy’s position on the feasibility of a shared venture is all the more striking in that he, more than anyone else among the Marsovan missionaries, had developed fluency in Armenian and close relations with the local community. He and Herrick were initially the most enthusiastic adherents of the joint undertaking. Edward Riggs, who had been more reserved about sharing control, now cautioned the Prudential Committee about creating in the minds of the native brothers any appearance of unfair means or pressure to curtail their influence in the administration of the College. Any attempt to significantly modify the existing relationship should only follow “the most full and frank interchange of views with our native colaborers.” Following consultation with the Prudential Committee by Tracy and Herrick, who both traveled to Boston in 1892, it was decided to make some readjustment in the relationship between the Board of Managers and the College, to restate the objectives of the educational work, and to seek incorporation in the United States to fortify the College “in view of the hostility of the Turkish Government to missionary institutions.”56 The rift between missionaries and Armenians at Marsovan replicated the experience at other evangelical centers in western Turkey. Similar issues of governance and financial control in the Bithynian Union of Churches had necessitated the intervention of ABCFM leaders from Boston in the early 1880s (see chapter 1). It was the seemingly different character of relations between the two parties in Marsovan at that time that weighed significantly in Boston’s decision to authorize Anatolia’s founding and to support it financially. Charles Tracy was certainly correct in perceiving “nationalism vs. evangelism” to be a fundamental issue of contention. The identification of religion with nationality was a deeply rooted reality for Eastern peoples that Protestants, who regarded the separation of state and church as the norm, could not easily fathom, given their own very different experience. This proved to be a formidable obstacle to all missionary work in Turkey. Whereas the missionaries sought the expansion of evangelical communities under Ottoman rule and eschewed rebellion, the Armenians were increasingly drawn toward escaping Turkish dominion that had become ever more abhorrent as they became familiar with Western conditions of life.



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

79

Given the reigning assumption among missionary educators that their religious, educational, and cultural values represented the highest civilized standard that all should endeavor to emulate, it was to be expected that tensions would develop between themselves and domestic groups or individuals upon whom they placed the full onus of adaptation. No matter how much they strived to meet their mentors as equals, Armenians and Greeks were viewed by the missionaries affectionately, but also patronizingly, as tyros beginning the ascent to Protestant heights. Hence the common references to their indigenous colleagues as having childlike qualities. Under those circumstances, it was not surprising that Armenians and Greeks found the entrance barred to positions of leadership in missionary institutions where the presidents, deans, and treasurers were invariably Americans. Even Garabed Thoumayan, a talented individual and compelling orator who had traveled a large part of the cultural distance separating East from West by virtue of his studies and marriage in Europe, could not sustain a peer relationship with the Marsovan missionaries. There existed a basic inconsistency between the missionaries’ stated objective of creating fully independent institutions and their reluctance to yield control. The outcome of the deepening divide between Anatolia’s two founding parties was precipitated by the dramatic events from 1893 to 1895.57 THE CRISIS OF 1893 Increasingly bold initiatives by Armenian activists in many parts of Turkey and the harsh reprisals they provoked generated widespread anxiety from the early 1890s and produced divided loyalties within Armenian communities. The first ominous signs that Anatolia might become implicated in dissident activities appeared in the summer of 1892, when reports began to circulate that persons connected with the College were involved with a secret Armenian society hostile to the government. A former student was arrested and charged with crimes. President George Herrick believed the rumors to have been false or greatly exaggerated and considered the danger to have passed. However, at the beginning of the winter vacation in early January 1893 two students brought to the president a pair of “incendiary placards” in Turkish found posted at the campus entrance. Similar inflammatory notices summoning Muslims to overthrow the Sultan appeared elsewhere in Marsovan and other towns. The authorities reacted quickly. The chief of police for the province brought a military force to make arrests of several hundred Armenians in the region, including Anatolia professors Garabed Thoumayan and Hovannes Kayayan. After searching the premises, the police

80

Chapter 2

charged that the offensive placards had been prepared on Anatolia’s unusual printing device, known as a “cyclostyle,” not to be found elsewhere in the region. It was normally used by Edward Riggs to prepare school materials, who at the time had been away from Marsovan. Tensions mounted as authorities charged Anatolia, already under a cloud for not having a license to operate, with storing arms and other complicity. Threats against the College circulated widely. On the night of February 1, a fire completely consumed the nearly completed Girls School building, whose construction had begun the previous summer. Traces of kerosene left no doubt that arson was the cause. The mission staff at Marsovan immediately concluded that the placards were the work of Muslims, either government officials seeking an excuse to intimidate upstart Armenians or some dissident Turkish group. They were further convinced that the fire was set by fanatics among the police and military units. Their certainty was reinforced by the unsavory reputation of the police chief, Husref Pasha, well known as a former brigand, by his sudden appearance on the scene with a body of gendarmes immediately after the fire broke out, and other circumstantial proofs. In response to their appeals to the U.S. Legation in Constantinople for protection, the nearest American Consul, Milo Jewett, arrived from Sivas. He was followed some weeks later by the Legation Secretary, Harrie R. Newberry, accompanied from the capital by an Ottoman Foreign Office official. Their purpose was to investigate charges against the missionaries of abetting rebellious actions by Armenians, and the missionaries’ countercharges that Turkish officials were responsible for burning campus property. Newberry was sharply critical of Herrick’s actions in flying the U.S. flag over the campus and refusing to give up for arrest a native carpenter residing on campus. Herrick, alarmed by the climate of violence and uncertainty and stung by the inclination of Secretary Newberry to question his version of events, resolved in late March to pursue justice for his falsely accused Armenian colleagues by presenting the facts in person at the Legation in Constantinople.58 In Constantinople, Herrick forcefully pressed his demands for the U.S. minister’s intervention to compel the Ottoman government to free the unjustly accused Anatolia personnel and compensate the College for destruction of its property. Herrick despaired at finding himself not only the object of suspicion by Turkish authorities because of his accusations as to the origins of the fire and his impassioned appeals on behalf of the incarcerated Armenians, but also his credibility questioned even by his own country’s Legation, which advised him not to return to Marsovan. After about three weeks in Constantinople, Herrick embarked for England for medical treatment and to escape the hostility of Turkish officialdom. In London he continued vigorously to engage American and British officials,



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

81

demanding justice for his maligned and abused Armenian associates while losing no opportunity to castigate U.S. diplomatic representatives for incompetence.59 In the United States, meanwhile, Charles Tracy had been kept informed about the troubled events by his Marsovan colleagues, especially George Herrick. In counseling the Prudential Committee, he echoed Marsovan station’s conviction of a deep plot by Turkish officials to destroy Anatolia College and evangelical Christianity and communicated his certainty that the Armenian teachers had been falsely accused. In April 1893 he traveled to Washington, D.C., with ABCFM Foreign Secretary Judson Smith in the hope of meeting President Cleveland. Disappointed in that objective, he lodged a written statement with high officials and held a press interview. Tracy charged that outrages had been committed against the honor of the United States and its citizens in Turkey. They had been falsely charged with complicity in sedition, their property burned, and their mail intercepted. The U.S. Minister in Constantinople had unaccountably acquiesced in the prosecution of peaceful American citizens in precedence to their own claims for reparations. Tracy appealed for his government’s protection, emphasizing that Marsovan was a test case upon which hung the interests of more than two hundred American lives and two million dollars’ worth of property in the Ottoman Empire.60 In fact, the Legation had pursued the matter more determinedly than Tracy was aware, but had formed somewhat different views of what had transpired. Secretary Newberry concluded from his investigation that an armed Armenian revolutionary society based at Marsovan with branches in other towns had posted the offensive placards, probably prepared on Anatolia’s cyclostyle, thereby provoking justifiable intervention by local Ottoman authorities. The latter, however, had reacted with excessive vindictiveness against Christians. The only conclusion consistent with the evidence, albeit circumstantial, was that the irascible Husref Pasha and his men had burned Anatolia’s building in retaliation. Newberry, presumably in cooperation with his Ottoman Foreign Office colleague, thereupon obtained the dismissal of the police chief and other implicated officials. Accusations that arms and ammunition had been secreted at Anatolia he found to be entirely false. Acting quickly, the Legation, supported by its British and German counterparts, secured the release by early April of all but about twenty of the imprisoned Armenians, not including, however, the two Anatolia professors. Newberry had advised that the evidence so conclusively implicated them in anarchist activities as to rule out their inclusion in the general amnesty. He recorded also that when the evidence was shown to Edward Riggs, responsible for the College during Herrick’s absence, Riggs declared it sufficient to cast grave doubts upon their innocence and

82

Chapter 2

that until the Turkish court had issued its verdict he would recommend to the trustees that their names be removed from the College register. In Riggs’s estimation, according to Newberry, their actions had seriously hurt the good name of the Americans at Marsovan and had seriously implicated the College. Following further discreet negotiations, the Ottoman government very shortly dismissed all charges against the Americans. It agreed to compensate Anatolia for its loss of property and to issue permits for the operation of the College and the reconstruction of the ruined building. The resolution of the Marsovan incident was cited by President Grover Cleveland in his annual message to the U.S. Congress in December 1893.61 In Marsovan the strain of events had taken a heavy toll on the reduced mission staff who awaited the return of Herrick or Tracy to resume direction of the troubled college. Tracy was reluctant to leave the United States at that time because of the ill health of his wife and children. President Herrick, on the other hand, had been severely shaken by the events in Marsovan, the accusations leveled against him by Turkish officials, and the questioning of his judgment by U.S. authorities. He had recently undergone a medical operation in England where he attended also to his family’s chronically feeble health. As he explained to Judson Smith: “It troubles me that Mr. Tracy returns reluctantly. But what can be done? I came near to breaking down. Riggs is breaking down. Smith is feeble. Future looks shaky still, more because of the folly of some Armenians, than the opposition of the Turks.”62 Herrick, however, continued to vigorously assert the innocence of the two teachers. He addressed the British Foreign Office about the harsh treatment of prisoners by Turkish jailers and wrote a detailed defense of several young Armenians whom he had known at Anatolia, even though it blackened his own name with Ottoman officialdom. Later that same year, he returned to less conspicuous publication work in Constantinople until such time as his notoriety with Marsovan officials should abate. As it turned out, he was never to resume his work in Marsovan. Tracy returned in June 1893 to complete Herrick’s term of office at Anatolia, just as the latter had done for him two and a half years earlier.63 Upon his return, Tracy found feelings running high against the College. Despite the dismissal of formal charges of sedition against the missionaries, a heavy cloud of suspicion hung over them in the Muslim community. On the other hand, many Armenians regarded the College as having deserted its imprisoned teachers to gain its own exoneration. In June, Thoumayan and Kayayan were condemned to execution for aiding a revolutionary society to commit treasonous acts. Only intervention by British and American diplomatic authorities induced the Ottoman government to pardon the condemned teachers on the condition of their



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

83

remaining abroad permanently. Sporadic violence raged in the Marsovan district that summer with killings among Armenian factions who also threatened the lives of college staff, particularly Edward Riggs. Turkish officials were stern to the point of harassment with students and school personnel. Although the government had paid compensation for the destroyed building, local authorities refused to issue the promised permit for new construction to replace it.64 One of the most intriguing figures from Anatolia’s first years was Garabed Thoumayan. First chairman of the Anatolia Board of Managers, he was the most prominent Armenian evangelical figure in Marsovan until his arrest in early 1893 and subsequent banishment. During his imprisonment, the American Legation received pressure on his behalf from influential people in the United States, Britain, and France. This may have been due in part to the influence of his Swiss wife, Lucie Thoumayan-Rossier de Vismes, from a well-known Geneva family. His erstwhile missionary colleagues viewed him ambivalently at best after relations were strained over the hospital matter and financial and governance issues, and especially his apparent connection with anti-Ottoman political forces. An Armenian source identifies him as a member of the Hunchakian Revolutionary Party as early as 1891. Clearly, he exercised influence beyond the confines of provincial Marsovan. Many years later, after Sultan Abdul Hamid II was compelled to abdicate in favor of a representative government (1909), Thoumayan won election to the newly formed national parliament.65 By the late fall of 1893, chronic unrest in the district had eased. Its new governor, characterized by the Americans as an able and fair-minded figure, succeeded in seizing the outlaw band of Armenian revolutionaries who had terrorized the district. Edward Riggs unearthed one fugitive hiding in the College. Their apprehension dispelled much of the Muslim animus against Anatolia. Local officials, in the meantime, had demonstrated effective efforts to protect the campus. The U.S. Minister in Constantinople had intervened successfully with the government to obtain permission to rebuild the Girls School. There were promising signs that tranquility might be returning to Marsovan.66 The yearlong crisis had been a severe trial for the missionaries, “a storm such as we never encountered before,” wrote George Herrick. He described it as the darkest night he had known in his missionary life but trusted that at last “the morning cometh,” invoking the Anatolia College motto. The tumultuous events had made them all more aware of some deeper aspects of the complex religious and ethnic mosaic that comprised Ottoman society. Their eyes were opened to the disruptive potency of nationalist aspirations by certain Christian elements. Herrick concluded, on the basis of recent developments, that the American missionaries had

84

Chapter 2

become “connected with a single race, the Armenian, in Turkey, in ways and to a degree which, to say the least, is now growing seriously embarrassing.” Events had forced them to take stock of their obligations to the Turkish government as foreigners residing in the empire. Repeatedly, they professed with evident sincerity their adherence to Ottoman law and their eschewal of any disloyal or seditious intentions. At the same time, they could not avoid realization of a fundamental ambivalence in their very presence in Turkey as bearers of a religious doctrine replete with overtones of social improvement and political reform. Herrick found himself obliged to acknowledge that the Armenians did in fact have a “serious grievance” against their rulers, and to recognize that “the Gospel in this world IS revolutionary.” George White conceded that the missionary work had a large measure of indirect responsibility for the dissident movement. “We always counsel loyalty, but the inevitable effect of the open Bible, of Protestantism, of colleges, schools and books, is against tyranny in every form. We have aided in starting a movement which has gone beyond our power to check.”67 Charles Tracy came to a somewhat different realization after nine months back in Marsovan, following his long absence in America where he had relied upon information provided principally by Herrick. He now understood that, a year earlier in Washington, he had been “in the bliss of ignorance,” from which he was only now painfully disabused. Tracy considered that Herrick, through misplaced trust, had been unable to recognize the perfidy of men whom he had defended, had thereby brought suspicion upon himself and all his colleagues, and had made it impossible for himself to return to Marsovan. In guarded but unmistakable language, he confided to Foreign Secretary Judson Smith: I am amazed and confounded to find out what things have probably been done on our premises by men who crept over walls, or got in with false keys in the dark hours when we slept in our innocence. Suffice it to say that wicked men have done all they could to betray us, and drag our institution into participation in things that we hate, intending to charge upon us, in case of necessity, the things which they did while we were asleep. I think the government has now some just idea of the impish work that has been done by scoundrels on purpose to ruin us. Had I known all, I would not have returned here myself. I should have considered the hope of rectification nil. The ideas of deception and fraud which we have had to learn, are as far beyond the sphere of our previous comprehension as Timbuctoo is outside of Christendom.

Tracy was reluctant to provide further information in writing. “Work is much and embarrassments many.” The government seemed to have understood Anatolia’s innocence, though the general public remained suspicious.68



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

85

During the last turbulent decades before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, it was extremely difficult for the American missionaries to avoid becoming ensnared in the conflicts and passions that were hastening it to its doom. They faced an ever-deepening dilemma. On the one hand, they acknowledged the authority of the Ottoman state and tried to avoid any activities that might compromise the legitimacy of their presence and activities or expose themselves to charges of encouraging disloyalty to constituted authority. At the same time, their religious teachings contradicted the official faith of the Ottoman rulers, while their educational influence reinforced in the Sultan’s Christian subjects a separate cultural identity, enhanced self-confidence, and the expectation of social and material improvement that distanced them further from prevailing realities. The missionaries steered their way through these contradictions by adhering to their fundamental precept that their purpose was to carry out God’s will by saving souls through Christ, irrespective of the hazards. In all their endeavors they exhibited a strong humanitarian concern for all whom they encountered, evangelical Christians, and others. One concrete result of this long crisis was the station’s renunciation of all revolutionary schemes, the countenancing of which “would deprive us of all the right to continue our institutions.” Students were required to sign a statement of loyalty to the government and promise nonparticipation in revolutionary activities. Under a stricter admissions policy, enrollment initially fell by over one-third. For the next few years, admission was limited mostly to boarding students whose behavior could be more closely monitored.69 One consequence of the 1893 crisis was to terminate any prospect of Anatolia passing to the management of local people. The Armenian leadership in the College had been shattered by the departure of Thoumayan and Kayayan; both were on the Board of Managers, and the former was its chairman. Political divisions within the Armenian community and doubts about the true loyalties of some within the College circle strengthened resistance on the American side to relinquishing control. Turkish officials now viewed Armenians with grave suspicion. Property rights for designated foreigners under the extraterritorial provisions of the Capitulations and guarantees of protection secured by the U.S. Legation favored a wholly American-controlled institution. Moreover, the troubles of that year had so afflicted the fortunes of the local community that it was even more unlikely to meet its annual monetary commitment upon which rested its claim to a share in the College’s management.70 The Board had already set in motion the College’s incorporation in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, a procedure followed earlier for ABCFM institutions. The new corporate body took the name “Trustees of Anatolia College,” with its governing board continuing to be the

86

Chapter 2

Prudential Committee. The charter broadly empowered it to maintain an institution for the education of young men and to confer such diplomas and degrees as were granted by any college or university in Massachusetts. No student was to be refused admission because of religious opinions. Interestingly, this Act of Incorporation of 1894 included no mention of the institution’s foreign location or of any other authority or jurisdiction, such as the Ottoman state. No reference was made to the earlier constitution, which had never been legally formalized and which this act in effect superseded, or to a local Board of Managers. The trustees were empowered to appoint the president and faculty, hold the College property, and regulate the course of study. By establishing a separate legal entity for the College, the ABCFM in effect differentiated educational activities not strictly evangelical from those serving its principal mission, while retaining control over the former through its Prudential Committee acting as trustees. By contrast, the Marsovan Seminary and the Girls School remained under direct ABCFM authority as mission institutions subject to supervision from its headquarters in Constantinople.71 From the time of the arrest of Thoumayan and Kayayan, the Board of Managers in Marsovan consisted, in practice, solely of its five American members. Although local Armenians did seek in later years to restore the arrangement originally agreed upon for joint control, the American side considered the issue fully resolved.72 THE MASSACRES OF 1895 With the College on a new footing and a degree of normalcy restored, Tracy observed in the early fall of 1895 a favorable turn for missionary schools as they gained greater public approval. Applications to Anatolia were twice the level of the previous year, exceeding its current capacity. The local governor exhibited a friendly disposition toward the College. Tracy saw, however, that the political climate was again worsening as sporadic violence attributed to revolutionary elements, or “nihilists” as the missionaries termed them, claimed lives in the Marsovan area. The annual station report recorded: “Faith in God seemed to be supplanted by faith in the Powers of Europe. In one part of the population ecstatic hopes prevailed; on all sides moral distinctions lost ground fast; crime was becoming virtue, and rectitude, crime.” A prominent evangelical follower was murdered and a new Turkish school burned down. At least one Armenian student at Anatolia was apprehended in connection with the former incident. “The Christian conscience could bear all this in the name of patriotism,” intoned the station report. In October, another fire in the new Girls School building was extinguished with minor damage. The



Identity and Survival (1886–1895)

87

missionaries again saw little doubt of arson and now suspected Armenian revolutionaries seeking to provoke protests by the Western nations against the inequities of Ottoman rule. Following renewed demands by the European powers in the wake of Turkish violence in 1894 against Armenians in Sassun and other districts, the government agreed to a modified version of the reforms mandated by the Treaty of Berlin for its six eastern provinces. Marsovan, located at the western extremity of that region, would be encompassed in the proposed measures. The news prompted joy among local Christians but also fear about the reactions of their Muslim neighbors as reports arrived that fall of new attacks on Christians in Trebizond, Erzerum, Bitlis, and elsewhere by enraged mobs. “At last, on Nov. 15th, the storm burst.”73 Muslim villagers with all sorts of weapons poured into the Marsovan market area to join townspeople in attacking Armenians and looting their shops. Inside the college walls shrieks were heard from the immediate neighborhood as great terror seized the more than 250 defenseless people concentrated there. At one point, the mob rushed toward the campus, but was turned back by government officials, prompting the local governor to station a troop of soldiers on the campus. The following day, more than eighty bodies were brought for burial in the Armenian cemetery next to the campus. Most Armenian shops were ruined and many homes sacked. Similar massacres took place at five other locations in the region, including towns with evangelical churches under Marsovan’s supervision, such as Zille and Vezir Kopreu. Elsewhere prompt action by police or restraint by the Muslim population averted such scenes. It was estimated that over four hundred people were killed in the Marsovan district: a terrible toll, though far lower than the tens of thousands reported from more heavily populated Armenian centers further east. At Euphrates College in Harpout, for example, most of the school buildings were torched. In Marsovan, as elsewhere, the attacks were directed only against Armenians. Greeks and Jews, with few exceptions, remained unharmed.74 Edward Riggs, describing these events, attributed them primarily to “the persistent fomenting of uneasiness by the revolutionaries” combined with an inefficient and dishonest government and Muslim elements easily aroused to mob fury. He feared that the effort by the revolutionaries to involve Anatolia College in their scheme to provoke foreign intervention would continue even though “it is an open question whether it will result in this (foreign intervention) or in the bloody annihilation of the Armenian people.” He requested guidance from colleagues in Constantinople as to the probability of a return to peace and tranquility that would allow their work to continue. Otherwise, “it may be said to be out of the question to carry on such large institutions as ours, especially when they must necessarily contain in themselves some of the inflammable

88

Chapter 2

elements.” The College had made an honest effort to exclude young men of revolutionary sympathies, but “in the present crisis it may almost be said that every Armenian is a revolutionist.” The missionaries had reason to suspect that things were done about and among them “for which we would be wholly unwilling to be held responsible.” Anatolia’s Greek students, on the other hand, were in great distress and proposing to leave the College in a body. Riggs confided to the trustees that respected local officials had advised the missionaries to close their schools and depart from Turkey for the safety of their lives “before the crash comes in the spring.” However, they had resolved to remain to carry on both educational and evangelical work.75 As Anatolia College completed its first decade, its fortunes seemed to have reached their lowest point. The student body had been decimated, and many of those remaining seemed to be disaffected. Much ambivalence now characterized its relationship with the fractured Armenian community. Ottoman officialdom viewed the College with suspicion, while new rules tightened the operation of Christian schools and the circulation of books. The American staff in Marsovan was exhausted by their unflagging efforts to hold the station’s work together under constant danger. During that sorrowful winter of 1895–1896 new blows fell upon them. Martha King, a newly arrived teacher in the Girls School and recent graduate of Carleton College, who had won the hearts of the evangelical community by her cheerful goodwill, was carried off by smallpox. Only a few weeks later, the last surviving member of the station’s founders, John Smith, succumbed to illness after thirty-seven years of missionary work. In recording these events, Charles Tracy saw their effect upon his colleagues as “to nerve the rest of us to do more and better work.”76

3

} Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey An International Christian College (1896–1914)

I

RECOVERY AND EXPANSION

n the aftermath of the attacks against the Armenian people, characterized by the American Board’s foreign secretary as the greatest disaster to have befallen any of its missions, the work of the Marsovan station became more demanding than ever. The massacres, pillaging, and destruction of shops had created extreme distress during the ensuing winter. The plight of Armenians throughout Turkey spurred responses in Europe and the United States where relief operations commenced. The Red Cross Society embraced the task and the National Armenian Relief Committee began work in New York. The treasurer of the Western Turkey Mission, William Peet, directed countrywide efforts from Constantinople. The Marsovan station mounted a campaign to distribute donations from abroad to stricken areas. A major project was to revive the weaving industry, at one time the chief nonagricultural occupation in Marsovan. Though it had declined earlier, it nearly ceased with the mob attacks. By supplying thread or raw cotton to local spinners and weavers and organizing the sale of the 150,000 yards of gingham cloth and toweling they produced, the missionaries were able to provide employment for sixty people and assist about 5,000 from the proceeds. This work continued until the spring of 1897. The British Ambassador, Philip Currie, declared that the one bright spot in all the darkness that covered Asiatic Turkey was the heroism, prudence, and common sense of the American missionaries.1 In the course of their endeavors to distribute food and clothing to deprived families, it became apparent to the Marsovan team that many 89

90

Chapter 3

children had been orphaned by the slaughter. From the fall of 1896, the station began providing a home and education for abandoned children from a wide geographical area under the care of Armenian aides. Fifty girls were housed on the campus, while adjoining quarters were rented for nearly sixty boys, supervised initially by Myra Tracy with the assistance in later years of Phoebe W. J. Carrington and Mary P. Wright. Within two years, the twin orphanages had grown to accommodate 166 children. Their instruction concentrated on the mastery of useful trades—tailoring, weaving, shoemaking, cabinetry—while some of the better learners were admitted to the preparatory divisions of Anatolia and the Girls School. It was anticipated that the orphanages would be temporary expedients until the victims of the 1895 attacks could return to their communities and find employment. In fact, they continued for a decade until all the children could be placed with families or trained to be self-supporting.2 At the same time, the station began a new school for young boys from the Orthodox primary school that served Marsovan’s small Greek settlement but had suspended operation. Some resided in the Home, the separate boarding unit for younger males under Sarah Riggs’s supervision. Reporting on these many activities, Charles Tracy apologized to the trustees that the pressure of work made it almost impossible to keep them informed about station affairs.3 The Marsovan team could not have undertaken these additional labors without the full involvement of missionary wives Myra Tracy, Sarah Riggs, and Esther White or without new reinforcement for its shrinking and aging staff. In the fall of 1893, two recent graduates of Carleton College in Minnesota arrived to take up duties. Frances C. Gage, bringing teaching experience from the public schools of St. Paul, Minnesota, first studied Turkish and then took over the principal’s responsibilities at the Girls School from Eliza Fritcher, who departed after thirty years of service in Turkey. Gage was assisted by her ill-starred friend and classmate, Martha King. In the summer of 1895 they received the visit of their former instructor, Charlotte Willard, a minister’s daughter and graduate of Smith College who had taught mathematics and astronomy at Carleton for eight years. On sabbatical leave, Willard traveled to Marsovan at her own expense and volunteered her services for the year. It happened to be the fateful year that saw both the Armenian massacres and the early death of her former student, Martha King. These experiences prompted her decision to resign her post at Carleton and accept the station’s call to devote the remainder of her working years to education at Marsovan. Willard and Gage helped the Marsovan station meet its new responsibilities in the wake of the Armenian disaster. Ill health and family obligations compelled Gage to resign her position in 1898, but she entered YWCA service in the United States and returned later to Turkey. Char-



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

91

lotte Willard followed her to the United States upon the recommendation of Charles Tracy, who feared she, too, was heading for a breakdown. He wrote to the American Board: “she is a rare woman, whom it will pay well to make temporary sacrifice to keep, and keep in good heart.” Willard returned to Marsovan a year later to begin a long tenure as principal of the Girls School. Tall and commanding, she shaped the School and sustained its operation under the most trying circumstances.4 The pull of mission life drew back to Marsovan an impressive number of offspring from station families. The daughters of John Smith, Jane and Bertha, returned in the 1880s, followed by Edward and Sarah Riggs’s daughter Susan, who in 1892 commenced a long term of service in the Girls School. After the crises of 1893–1895, Anatolia’s recovery was assisted by the return of several more mission children. Henry H. Riggs, Susan’s brother, after completing studies at Carleton and Auburn Seminary, returned in 1896 for three years. He later became president of Euphrates College in Harput and married Annie Tracy, his childhood companion at Marsovan, who died in childbirth in 1905. His older brother, Charles T. Riggs, joined the station with his wife for three years (1900–1903) after studies at Princeton and Auburn Seminary and a teaching stint at Robert College. Tracy’s son, Charles K., graduated from Oberlin in 1897 and returned to Marsovan as a tutor, joined the following year by his brother, Henry Chester Tracy, also an Oberlin graduate. The mission staff was further strengthened in 1898 by the return of Sarah Sears Smith, John Smith’s widow, to relieve the exhausted Sarah Riggs as housemother for younger boarders in the Home, remaining for seventeen years. Missionary offspring were especially qualified to work in the field by virtue of their early acquisition of local languages and familiarity with exotic circumstances that would deter most Americans. It says much about the spirit infusing the community in Marsovan that so many of its youth chose to return following their studies in America, in many cases to begin full careers in mission service. The frequent marriages among missionary children illustrated the compelling quality of mission life in Turkey despite its many ordeals.5 After the crisis years of 1893 to 1895, circumstances improved. Once the revolutionary group was apprehended, tensions gradually eased in the Marsovan area as relations between Turks and Armenians became more civil. Business revived, demonstrating once again the amazing recuperative powers of the Armenians. Newly appointed local officials proved more congenial than their predecessors and cooperated in the distribution of relief supplies. When a conflagration destroyed two hundred shops in the market area and hundreds of homes, Anatolia students were sent with the campus fire engine to battle the flames, meriting a letter of commendation from the local governor.

92

Chapter 3

With the phasing out of relief work, the pressures on the Marsovan team abated somewhat. The Girls School had moved into its newly reconstructed building, Fritcher Hall, funded by the Ottoman government’s indemnification for the structure lost in 1893. Anatolia’s growing endowment now exceeded $32,000. Charles Tracy was able to write that the condition of the College had never been more satisfactory. “In the face of difficulties sometimes appalling, the college has held on its way. We hope it has passed quite through the typhoon.” He believed that people in Turkey had been shocked into a realization of the things that were truly important. Demand for admission mounted and enrollment exceeded capacity even with increases in tuition and fees. By 1899 it had reached a total of 246, of whom forty-six were in the four-year college and 200 in preparatory classes. Tracy perceived “an ever-swelling tide. We now understand that there is a great movement in the matter of education and that an institution with moral foundations like ours is in special favor.” Moreover, problems of discipline were fewer than in earlier years with half as many students.6 Capping Anatolia’s recovery as the century drew to a close was the issuance of the long-awaited imperial decree (firman) conferring legal status on the College and recognizing its diplomas. Although it had been promised in 1893 as part of the agreement brokered by the U.S. Legation in settlement for the destruction of the Girls School building, Ottoman authorities had withheld it as the official stance toward foreign institutions hardened. In the meantime, periodic challenges to Anatolia’s right to operate and hold property had spurred a redoubling of efforts to secure the promised permit. Its final conferral in 1899, owing to sustained pressure by the Legation, removed any trace of doubt about Anatolia’s legitimacy under Ottoman law. An extraordinary ceremony took place on campus for bestowal of the firman. Government representatives were joined by Marsovan’s leading citizens and a military regiment in parade dress for the governor’s presentation of the coveted document to President Tracy. Anatolia entered the twentieth century with strengthened sinews, its prospects brighter than at any time in its past.7 MEDICAL WORK From their earliest years in Turkey, missionaries confronted health hazards. They quickly discerned their particular vulnerability to unfamiliar diseases and poor sanitary conditions. From protecting themselves and their families against the frequent epidemics that afflicted Turkish towns, their attention soon turned to making health concerns an extension of their evangelical calling. With wives commonly taking the lead, they



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

93

introduced improved hygiene and attended the ill, mostly within their small missionary circle, given their limited numbers and means. Cyrus Hamlin had brought to Constantinople medicines not found in Turkey, especially for the common scourge of cholera to which he lost a son and grandson. His successors continued the practice. Amelia Leonard, wife of the first permanent missionary assigned to Marsovan, though without medical training, was sought after by local families for her preventive methods and practical cures. Myra Tracy later led the Marsovan team in distributing essentially the same drugs used by Hamlin during a cholera epidemic that struck the area in 1894, saving many lives. The experience of the very few physicians sent by the American Board to selected missions had clearly shown that healing could be a powerful tool for overcoming the common xenophobia of local residents and opening the way for conversion. William Goodell had stressed the importance of the Christian physician in the early years of mission work: “Let him go into any town or city, and Turks, Jews, and Christians would all beseech him to take up his residence among them.”8 The staff at Marsovan had implored the Board in Boston repeatedly to provide medical services for the mission staff and the community. The nearest hospital was at Sivas, six days away and useless for an emergency. The Tracys, after thirty years of missionary life and having lost four of their eight children to inferior health conditions, felt the need as acutely as anyone. Some improvement indeed had been achieved in recent years. The skills of native doctors had advanced; six of Anatolia’s early graduates went on to study medicine. Dr. Altounian, professor of science at Anatolia, regularly treated patients. However, the need was strongly felt for physicians who met Western standards, particularly for surgery, as well as for trained nurses. The issue took on greater urgency in the 1890s after the deaths of Bertha Smith from typhoid, her father, John Smith, from influenza, and Martha King from smallpox. Besides losses among the missionaries themselves, those under their care were a concern; many of the orphans they had taken in after the 1893 massacres were in serious need of medical treatment, especially for eye diseases. Consequently, the entire station staff, including spouses, signed a forceful appeal to the Prudential Committee in March 1897 that bears quoting: We, at Marsovan, with a College, Girls School, Seminary and orphanages in addition to missionary families and teachers, that is, with near four hundred souls on these premises alone, and, with a vast amount of poverty, sickness and misery all about us, feel that WE MUST HAVE a good physician in charge here. The experiences of the past year have swept away all reserve on our part. We now speak strongly and straight to the mark. Our missionary force has been decimated within about a year. Some of our number have been, or are, worn almost to breaking with care and anxiety about the sick in

94

Chapter 3

our circle or in the city, a great part of this burden being the consequence of inefficiency in the medical department here. We simply cannot endure the present arrangement.9

The Board responded with dispatch to their plea by appointing Thomas Spees Carrington, a physician then practicing in Philadelphia, who arrived with his wife in the fall of 1897. They had been preceded earlier that year by an English nurse, Josephine Taylor, sponsored by a Quaker society in England to assist the Armenians, who had set up a small clinic with a few beds in a rented house near the mission compound before falling ill and having to depart. Under Dr. Carrington’s direction, the unit moved to larger quarters in a former lumber shed within the compound. By 1900 it occupied three buildings with forty beds and included an equipped operating room, an isolation ward for contagious diseases, and living quarters for nurses. The new facility received significant support in the form of equipment and furnishings from the small hospital founded by Lucy Thoumayan in 1892 that was forced to close after her husband’s imprisonment a year later as well as from an annual subvention that Mrs. Thoumayan secured in England. Dr. Carrington sometimes treated as many as one hundred patients a day, including surgical cases—he performed the first appendectomies in Marsovan. The physician was assisted by missionaries who translated, prepared food, and sometimes even administered chloroform. The ill included Muslims who, according to Charles Tracy, for the first time overcame their aversions to Protestants and missionaries: “Those who came most prejudiced cannot continue to hate the patient and tireless physicians and nurses who spend their days and nights in relieving their pain and restoring them to health. It is very probable that they will learn to love and honor the Lord and Master in whose name they minister. Nothing melts away the soul’s ice and snow faster than genuine Christian medical work.”10 The hospital’s evangelistic dimension was pursued through daily prayer, religious services in the wards, distribution of biblical texts, and bedside talks and readings. The hospital became the only American institution at Marsovan that Ottoman authorities allowed Muslims to patronize freely before the revolution of 1908. Its patients included civil and military authorities. Positive results were quickly seen in the orphanage where a variety of diseases had been rampant; widespread trachoma among the orphans was completely stamped out. In less than two years, the new medical department, consisting of the hospital and outpatient dispensary, treated approximately five thousand patients and performed 254 surgical operations. The work was both tiring and hazardous. Dr. Carrington himself contracted life-threatening blood poisoning in surgery and was ill for a



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

95

month. Edward Riggs described Dr. Carrington’s coming as “an unspeakable blessing to us and to multitudes of others.”11 The importance of introducing enlightened attitudes toward health care in place of reigning superstitions was illustrated by an account related by Charles Tracy. An Anatolia physician received a woman from a mountain village who complained of stomach pains she believed to be caused by a snake that had crawled through her mouth as she slept outdoors one hot summer night. All efforts to dissuade her of the cause of her discomfort proved fruitless. After some weeks her condition became critical from loss of weight and nervous exhaustion. Determined to save her life, by ruse if necessary, the doctor concealed a reptile preserved in alcohol, blindfolded her and went through the motions of pumping her stomach and extracting an object. Thereupon he removed the blindfold and revealed the ostensible culprit. The patient departed contentedly and made a swift recovery.12 Nursing care, an essential dimension of the hospital, proved to be most difficult to sustain, especially since nursing scarcely existed as an occupation in Turkey. As a succession of foreign nurses took ill and withdrew, it became imperative to develop an indigenous corps of trained aides. A formidable hurdle lay in social taboos against interpersonal physical contact, particularly between genders. Dr. Carrington was assisted in overcoming this obstacle by a graduate of the Girls School from a respected Armenian family. Lusaper Dorikian completed a course of practical instruction at the hospital, becoming in 1903 the first graduate of its nurse’s training program. She and the few others who followed her at the hospital made free house calls on Marsovan’s indigent families and traveled to district towns to demonstrate hygiene and proper care for the ill. In 1909, Fanny G. Noyes, a registered nurse from Kansas, began a tenure that lasted until the hospital’s first closure in World War I.13 Dr. Carrington departed for Constantinople in 1904 but the following year was replaced by the Turkish-speaking Dr. Jesse Krekore Marden, born at Aintab, the son of missionaries who had both died of disease in the field. After graduating from Dartmouth College and studying medicine at the Universities of Michigan and Vienna, he practiced in Aintab, Adana, and briefly at Marsovan under Dr. Carrington before accepting Dr. Tracy’s invitation to return and assume the hospital’s management. Following the construction of a new wing, its capacity expanded to fiftyfive beds with a staff of twenty. The surgical department was enlarged by the addition of a Turkish doctor, Nedim Zembiljizada, and of Dr. Miltiades Hadji-Savvas, Anatolia graduate of 1898. Patients flocking from the surrounding towns and villages were expected to pay according to their ability; no one was turned away for lack of means.

96

Chapter 3

Under Dr. Marden’s dynamic leadership, the hospital expanded to become the medical center for north-central Asia Minor, one of nine under missionary auspices in Turkey, treating thousands of patients every year. Its expansion was accomplished with the leanest resources, though as it became better known, it drew support from friends in Great Britain and the United States. Dr. Marden led the fundraising efforts and, with his wife, the former Lucy Morley, contributed significantly from personal resources. A bequest from Mrs. Ella R. Towle of Grinnell, Iowa, enabled the station to begin erecting in 1911 a four-story brick and stone structure, the largest in the Anatolia compound. Overseeing medical services was a Board of Management composed of missionaries; in 1914, they were George White, Charlotte Willard, Dana Getchell, and Dr. Marden. Formally, the hospital was a separate agency of the American Board; in practice, it was linked to the College administratively, while the two bodies reinforced each other’s public esteem. An English visitor to Marsovan at this time described the hospital with its gracious gardens as “a most powerful silent agency . . . which provides a standing and surprising contrast which fails to strike no one who sets foot within the gates. You pass at a step from squalor and pools of filth in narrow alleys to the bright compound, and seem to have got into another world.”14 THE MARTHA A. KING MEMORIAL SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF Their experience with the hospital and travels through the countryside made the missionary educators aware of how little was done for children with physical disabilities. When a deaf boy was brought to them, Charlotte Willard arranged for a teacher to be trained to aid him. Galene Philadelphevs, daughter of an evangelical pastor, was sent to the Clarke Institute for the Deaf at Northampton, Massachusetts, prior to assuming responsibility for teaching three deaf and mute students. Willard chose to dedicate this new departure in humanitarian service to Martha King, her former student who had succumbed to illness after only two and a half years of service in the Girls School. The Park Avenue Congregational Church in Minneapolis, King’s church from childhood where she later served as pastor’s assistant, funded the purchase of a house for the new school, while friends from Carleton also lent support. Operating from 1910 as an extension of the Girls School, it gradually developed special instruction in all three of the region’s main vernacular tongues. For the first time in this part of Turkey, deaf children not only attained facility in speech and in lipreading, but learned to read and write. In 1913 the King School enrolled fifteen pupils, including boarders, and received funding



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

97

from the Congregational Church Women’s Board. The largest contingent was of Armenians, whose head teacher was Miss Arslialouis Der Kaloustian. The King School demonstrated to Ottoman society that the physically handicapped possessed the potential for learning and improvement and needed to not be dismissed as hopelessly defective.15 GREEKS DISCOVER ANATOLIA The trials Anatolia weathered in the mid-1890s proved to be the threshold to the College’s steady progress during the decade and a half before the Great War. New developments both in the United States and in Turkey nurtured its flourishing. In America, a renewal of enthusiasm for mission work stimulated by “The Third Great Awakening” brought an active new generation to the cause. The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, formed in 1888, recruited college students for mission work under the watchword, “The Evangelization of the World in this Generation.” The increasing appeal of mission service for women helped to swell their ranks. Missionary associations proliferated; their emissaries, numbering 934 in 1890, were estimated to be 5,000 at the turn of the century and over 15,000 by 1915. The American Board deployed 216 missionaries in its Turkish missions in 1910. The heightened fervor for evangelism abroad served to loosen purse strings as donors responded generously to the call.16 Within Turkey, economic progress became more evident, particularly among the Christian communities of western Asia Minor. During the half century of missionary involvement in Marsovan, the town’s population had nearly doubled, reaching an estimated twenty-five to thirty thousand. The weaving trade expanded with the importation of cotton thread from England. The homes of its leading citizens were observed to be better furnished, and more of them had glass windows. Sewing machines, kerosene lamps, textiles, medicines, and other imported goods began to appear in the market. Aspirations mounted for further advancement through education. Material improvements, though still modest by Western standards and vulnerable to setbacks from periodic crop failures or political crises, broadened the range of Anatolia’s clientele, as did the gradual improvement in transportation. Although the newly constructed railways in western Turkey prior to World War I did not reach Marsovan itself, they nevertheless made the town more accessible. Several steamship companies now called at the nearest Black Sea ports, drawn by the expanding export trade. Macadamized surfacing of the road linking Marsovan with the burgeoning port of Samsun shortened travel time from three to two

98

Chapter 3

days. Anatolia thereby became more reachable from distant localities, particularly from Greek communities along the Black Sea coast that were experiencing an economic boom.17 Greeks outnumbered Armenians in the territory assigned to the Marsovan station, though not in its immediate vicinity. A few Greek families, mostly from interior towns, had sent their children to Marsovan’s schools from the station’s early years. Although many of them were Turkish speakers, a teacher by the name of Valavanis had been brought from Trebizond to teach Greek in the high school, followed by George Triantaphilides from Constantinople. The first regular Greek teacher in the Girls School was Aphrodite Nicolaidou, who arrived in 1886. In the mid1880s, twenty-six Greek youths attended the high school, Girls School, and Seminary. However, the larger Greek communities happened to be situated at the station’s far extremities, particularly in ports such as Samsun, and even beyond its borders in coastal towns further east, such as Ordu, Kerasun, and Trebizond. In most cases, they were served by wellestablished Greek schools. During Anatolia’s first years, therefore, Greeks from the Pontus shores had little incentive to send their children across the mountains to an undistinguished interior town lacking any strong Hellenic element. Changing circumstances now brought them within the College’s orbit. With only approximate notions of population magnitudes, given the absence of reliable figures, the missionaries at Marsovan came to realize that Greeks residing within their territory were far more numerous than they had supposed, perhaps more than three times as many as Armenians, while even further afield other Greek communities had become aware of Marsovan’s offerings. The expanded Black Sea trade had drawn Orthodox families from interior villages to the swelling coastal centers such as Samsun. Boosted chiefly by the foreign demand for oriental tobacco, commerce along the stretch of coast nearest to Marsovan had soared in recent years. Greeks had been mostly unscathed by the violence that afflicted Armenian communities and were becoming more prosperous and desirous of education. The missionary strategy, which aimed at Christianizing Turkey’s Muslim population through the demonstrated spiritual purity of the largely Armenian evangelical churches, had received a severe setback due to Armenian revolutionary activism and disproportionate Ottoman reprisals. The Marsovan missionaries now turned their hopes toward the Greeks.18 Greek Orthodox followers proved to be less susceptible to evangelical overtures than the more porous Armenian communities and less willing to abandon their religious heritage. The Greek Orthodox Church mounted stout resistance against those few so inclined. For example, the Patriarch Germanos issued a circular in 1913 instructing ecclesiastical



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

99

officials to forbid Orthodox families to send their sons to propagandistic Protestant schools. Moreover, while concentrating their early efforts on Armenians, very few missionaries had acquired the language and other skills needed for reaching the larger Greek population. The first Greek evangelical church was founded in 1867 at Demirtash in western Turkey, followed by those at nearby Smyrna and Manisa. In 1883, the Greek Evangelical Alliance was formed at Smyrna under the leadership of Dr. George Constantine to unite Hellenic Protestant groups throughout Turkey. In Constantinople, despite its large Greek community, the Greek Evangelical Church registered only twenty-two members in 1893 and did not have its own building. The first evangelical churches established by Greeks in the Pontus region adjoining Marsovan, at Ordu, Samsun, Fatsa, Unieh, and elsewhere often encountered violent opposition by local Orthodox groups. These early converts to Protestantism seem to have been influenced as much or more by the flood of Gospel translations into vernacular Greek from the mission press in Constantinople as by intermittent contacts with itinerant missionaries. However, their pastors, as a rule, completed their studies at the Marsovan Seminary before being ordained. An example is Nicholas Manousarides, who served from 1897 as pastor in the village of Semen in the hills above the Black Sea, succeeded in 1904 by Ioannis Anastasiades, Anatolia graduate of 1893. Rev. Pantelis Philadelphefs, for over thirty years (1888–1920), led the church at Ordu (Kotyora), which became the largest Greek evangelical congregation in Turkey. Still, overall results were meager, as the mission leadership in Constantinople recognized in 1906 when recommending more intensive efforts among Greeks.19 Over the years, Greeks gradually became better acquainted with the College, in some instances when traveling to Marsovan for treatment at the hospital; they accounted for almost half its patients during its first years of operation. Moreover, following the political troubles of the 1890s, Anatolia favored boarding students from outlying towns over applicants from Marsovan. Meanwhile, the small Greek settlement at Marsovan had grown to over five hundred by the late 1890s. It was originally composed largely of indigent miners who had settled there when the silver and lead mines in the Argyropolis (Gumushane) region became exhausted. In time, they improved their position, mostly as small purveyors of goods and services. George White announced in 1901 that “Greek education at Marsovan is permanently established on a natural basis.” As the College extended its geographical range, the proportion of Greek to Armenian students rose slowly during its first twenty years to become a majority in its last decade in Turkey. Between a quarter and a third of the student body normally consisted of Protestants, with the remainder divided mostly between Gregorians and Greek Orthodox.20

100

Chapter 3

The leading protagonist for building a Greek following was Edward Riggs, described by a colleague as “a magnificent specimen of a man, an accurate scholar, a profound thinker, an earnest believer.” Following two years’ study in Athens (1878–1880), he anchored the Greek department in the Seminary and Girls School, and later in the College, and made the Marsovan schools known by his tours to outlying Greek communities. He succeeded John Smith as director of the Seminary in 1896. For thirty-five years (1876–1911), Rev. Riggs was a powerful presence, his personality a “pivot upon which a Greek constituency and the preparation for teaching them have come into existence.” His daughter, Susan, followed in his footsteps, studying in Athens before joining the Girls School and staying for over twenty years and marrying her Marsovan colleague, Dana Getchell.21 As Anatolia’s reputation spread to adjoining provinces and beyond, it drew students from a steadily widening region. This largely unanticipated development for a school that had been narrowly constrained by geography and rudimentary transportation was depicted graphically by Anatolia’s leaders, as shown in the illustration captioned “The geographic range from which Anatolia drew its students.” The small vertical oval superimposed on the map of Turkey represents the origins of Anatolia students until about 1900. The larger horizontal oval encompassing all of Turkey’s Black Sea Coast, Constantinople, and a broad belt of the Asia Minor interior, shows that area’s expansion until about 1905. Finally, the octagonal figure portrays Anatolia’s extended drawing power by 1912, when students from beyond Turkey’s frontiers had discovered the College and given it a cosmopolitan profile. From the west, dating from about 1906, these students began to arrive from Thrace, Macedonia, Epirus, and Athens. From the opposite direction, Anatolia’s growing reputation and improved accessibility to the eastern Black Sea region beckoned families from Russia’s southernmost districts. Several students arrived from the newly expanded port of Novorossiysk, where wheat exports brought prosperity to a mixed population. After the first handful had found their way to Marsovan, Edward Riggs undertook a trip to the Caucasus region in the summer of 1909 to seek students, followed by George White a few years later. As a result, about thirty-five Russian-speaking youth of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds (Greek, German, Georgian, Circassian, Jewish, Serbian) joined the growing student body, to which they adapted with apparent ease. Others began to appear from Persia and Egypt, boosting to twelve the number of nationalities. Anatolia’s leaders were surprised by the influx, since they did not advertise the school, other than through the annually published Report and Catalogue. Students learned about it largely by word of mouth. Most were



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

101

Table 3.1.   Student Enrollment at Anatolia 1886–1915 Year 1886–87 1887–88 1888–89 1889–90 1890–91 1891–92 1892–93 1893–94 1894–95 1895–96 1896–97 1897–98 1898–99 1899–00 1900–01 1901–02 1902–03 1903–04 1904–05 1905–06 1906–07 1907–08 1908–09 1909–10 1910–11 1911–12 1912–13 1913–14 1914–15

Preparatory

College

Total

Graduates

 69  59  59  58  87  73  65  54  53 131 117 168 200 167 164 143 115 119 112 145 183 157 165 181 198 233 290 249 116

 34  71  64  57  45  47  40  34  40  56  32  44  46  71  88 114 103  96 103 103 127 106  99  81  72  67  82 176  84

113 130 117 115 112 120 105 88 93 187 149 212 246 238 252 257 218 215 215 248 310 263 264 262 270 280 372 425 200

 5 10  4  7 13  7  7  6  6 10  4  5  5  7 15  5 24 14 25 11 16 18 18 24  9  5  3 14  9

Sources: “Development of Anatolia College-Growth in Twenty Years-The Widening River,” June 1907, ABC 16.9.3., v. 29, no. 46; Annual Reports of Anatolia College, 1908–09, ibid., no. 50; 1912–13 and June 22, 1914, ibid., v. 39, nos. 78 and 82; Annual Reports of Marsovan Station, 1907–08, ibid., 16.9.3., v. 29, no. 47; and Mar. 21, 1912, v. 39, no. 70; ABCFM, “Higher Educational Statistics,” May 26, 1910, ABC 16.9.3., v. 40, no. 75; “Higher Educational Institutions of the W. T. M.,” July 1911, ibid., v. 39, no. 13; White, Adventuring, 157–60; The Anatolian, Bulletin for the Opening of the School Year, 1911–12, Marsovan, Turkey, 6–14; 1914–15, p. 18.

from middle-class families, some of whom could not afford more expensive institutions in large cities but could meet Anatolia’s more modest charges. A familiar spectacle every September was the arrival in Marsovan of caravans of carts and wagons bearing new students from exotic places. Charles Tracy was moved to exclaim, “How can our minds remain unkindled when students crowd in from two empires and from several smaller nations?”22

102

Chapter 3

Both the Greek and Armenian millets maintained their own networks of schools, mostly at the elementary level but also at the secondary. Their expansion during the decades before World War I, though made possible by the rising prosperity of that period, was provoked also by the success of the rival mission schools. Greek schools in Asia Minor were reported as numbering 1,830, with an enrollment of 184,568 in 1913, and Armenian schools as 813, with 81,226 students. A parallel effort was launched by Sultan Abdul Hamid II to found more and better schools for Turkish youth. Anatolia’s educators were well aware of the College’s powerful influence, as a model but also in “stirring to better effort those who dread its success.” They took satisfaction from observing that the several ethnic and religious groups were motivated “to develop their national schools to the utmost to prevent their young people from being attracted to the institutions of foreigners.” Anatolia’s stimulating effect upon the development of rival educational initiatives must be considered one of its significant accomplishments in Turkey.23 NEW DIRECTIONS IN MISSION SERVICE As the foreign missions movement in the United States gained new momentum during the last years of the nineteenth century, its meaning and purpose underwent subtle but significant changes. The rising influence of liberal or “modernist” currents in Protestant theology from the 1880s brought the concepts of “evangelization” and “civilization” (sometimes also expressed as “Christ or Culture”), seen earlier as in opposition, into a more complementary relationship. A new generation of missionaries became bearers of a more broadly conceived outreach. While they continued to be motivated by the fundamental cause of delivering salvation to foreign peoples, they came to view material and cultural improvement as entirely worthy goals. There was greater recognition of the importance to “native” societies of science, technology, and education. After 1900 a smaller proportion of new missionary recruits by the American Board were ordained ministers; more had studied worldly subjects such as business and agriculture. The American Board had never required its missionaries to subscribe to any narrowly defined theology nor examined closely their doctrinal beliefs. Cultural and material betterment had always been interwoven with more purely evangelistic goals. The educational and philanthropic dimensions of mission work were now given greater emphasis. The more the missionaries extended the range of ancillary benefits they were prepared to deliver, even perhaps at the risk of diluting the theological message, the more readily their overtures were welcomed by the “native



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

103

peoples” whom they were sent to win over. This shift in emphasis is aptly conveyed by a favorite metaphor in missionary circles around the turn of the century, that of “leavening” the Eastern peoples. It implied an indirect reformation of Oriental society according to Protestant values. The concept also had the merit of shifting attention away from measurable outcomes, such as the otherwise embarrassing statistics for the establishment of new Protestant churches in Muslim lands and for conversions from Islam. Richard Storrs, President of the American Board for a decade (1887–1897), while reasserting the primacy of “the conversion of individual souls to the Son of God,” also stressed the advancement of material and physical well-being and of liberty, illumination, and peace, virtually covering the gamut of Western liberal values.24 For missionaries in the field, any departure from the reigning principles of their calling was obviously a major concern and a sensitive one, not easily broached in their official correspondence, which tended to reassert traditional evangelical objectives. However, a revealing exercise engaging the entire missionary corps for western Turkey in 1906 illustrated the shift in attitudes that had taken place. The mission leaders decided to reassess their stance toward the “old churches,” that is, the Armenian Apostolic (Gregorian) and Greek Orthodox Churches, a perennial issue for the missionaries in Turkey. The Mission took the unusual step of asking all the resident missionaries to respond to a questionnaire on the subject. In response to the key question of what should be their posture toward those followers of the traditional churches who were shown to be “evangelically inclined,” only six of the thirty-eight respondents invoked the long-established policy of recruiting them for Protestant churches. Fourteen recommended they be counseled to remain in their old churches to exercise a transforming influence from within. The largest number, eighteen, believed there should be no attempt at proselytizing but that the decision should be left to the local Christian’s own conscience. While the issues were more complex and the responses more layered than this brief summary conveys, it demonstrates changing perceptions of mission objectives and diversity of opinion among the practitioners. Thus, it helps to establish the larger context for understanding contemporary developments at Marsovan.25 OBSTACLES TO EVANGELIZATION The Seminary at Bebek had been closed and relocated at Marsovan in 1865 in pursuit of the American Board’s mid-nineteenth century strategy of creating a “native ministry,” in preference to broader educational endeavors such as those introduced earlier by Cyrus Hamlin. After two

104

Chapter 3

decades of seminary work there, with modest results in achieving evangelistic goals, the decision had been taken to found a college separate from the theological school. The College’s founders justified that step as necessary for attracting larger numbers of youth in the expectation that more and better prepared students from the College would be channeled to the Seminary and onward to the pastoral vocation. The results, however, proved to be very different from anticipated, while the expectations of mission leaders became modified, due to both new circumstances and their own altered outlook on mission work.26 Three basic realities brought the mission team in Marsovan to a revised perception of its role. The first stubborn reality, one not easily acknowledged to their supervisors in Boston or even to themselves, was that the evangelical enterprise, as seen in traditional terms of conversions to Protestantism and the founding of new churches, was simply not succeeding. No headway at all had been made in drawing Muslims to the evangelical persuasion. But even among “nominal Christians,” as one decade followed another, the number of evangelical churches in the Marsovan area remained almost stationary, despite the missionaries’ constant efforts to advance their message through word and deed. Similar results were observed in other mission districts as church membership showed a gradual decline. In a report to the Western Turkey Mission in 1906, missionary Herbert Allen wrote, “The expansion of our work educationally and along all philanthropic lines has been marvelous, but the churches, glowing reports to the contrary, are either at a standstill or are slowly drifting backward. In private conversation this fact is never denied, in public it is not often mentioned.”27 A second reality, closely related to the first, was the paucity of native pastors, who were indispensable for founding new churches and for sustaining existing ones as ministers retired. Contrary to expectations, the growing College, despite its Christian ethos and required Bible study, failed to produce a greater flow of acolytes to the Seminary. On the contrary, it seemed to turn talented youth toward other careers. During its twenty-two years before Anatolia’s founding, over one hundred young men entered the Seminary, of whom sixty-five graduated; whereas in the equivalent period thereafter (1886–1908), only sixty-four entered with fifty-four completing their degrees. As enrollment at Anatolia passed the three hundred mark in the early 1900s, the contrasting trend in the Seminary became ever more disconcerting. Qualified applicants were so few that a new class was formed only every three years. Still only a handful of prospective pastors enrolled, while those graduating were even fewer. In the fall of 1905, just after Anatolia had graduated the largest number in its history, no Seminary class could be formed and lessons were suspended for the year.28



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

105

The basic reason that Armenians and Greeks shunned the evangelical call, of course, was simply their deep attachment to their own national churches and the communities that were inseparable from them. Whereas the missionaries sought to use education as an incentive for drawing youth to Protestantism, the indigenous peoples sent their sons and daughters to the Marsovan schools to advance their own goals of survival and betterment under the harsh and insecure Ottoman regime, or with the alternative strategy of fleeing Turkey. They were more than willing to make financial sacrifices to meet the costs of Anatolia’s outstanding secular education, but unwilling to entrust their offspring to a tuition-free theological seminary. Even in the College, instructors commented on students’ fears and suspicions of proselytizing. This was the third and most fundamental reality, of which the missionaries only gradually became fully aware. The missionaries attributed the disappointing results to a variety of factors. They had long expressed regret that so many of the most able and enterprising youth opted to emigrate, whereas it was hoped they would use their training to serve their native communities, preferably as pastors or teachers. An instance of immigration to New York was recorded as early as 1865, whereas from the 1880s a stream of Armenians from Marsovan formed a colony, mainly of fruit growers, in the San Joaquin Valley around Fresno, California. Even those few students who did opt for theological training often preferred to seek admission to seminaries abroad, after which they were unlikely to return for appointment to a struggling rural church. Charles Tracy was moved to author a report, “Results of Going to America for Education,” in which he concluded: “as far as preachers are concerned, while we see plenty of lamentable fruits, we see no tangible good results from going to America for education.” The trend toward emigration grew stronger after the 1895 massacres as continuing political tensions spurred departures. The random notations in Anatolia’s student register alone record the names of eighteen students or recent graduates who had immigrated to the United States by 1902; the entire number was surely much higher. Armenian communities outside Turkey eased the transition to a new life abroad. After the 1908 revolution, the Young Turk government relaxed restrictions on emigration, while shipping traffic increased and the cost of passage from Turkey to the United States fell steadily.29 Those former Anatolia students who did remain in Turkey were likely to be attracted to employment opportunities in foreign consulates, as teachers in elementary and secondary schools, and especially in the expanding network of commercial operations. The quickening trade in Black Sea coastal towns opened new opportunities. A growing merchant class in those centers sent its sons to Anatolia to prepare for entering

106

Chapter 3

family businesses. By contrast, the few evangelical churches were mostly situated in poorer villages and could not offer salaries that would draw educated young men to their pastorates. The American Board’s policy of gradually withdrawing its customary subsidy to newly founded churches, so as to foster self-reliance and responsibility, was seen to weaken their ability to fund ministers’ salaries at acceptable levels. The Western Turkey Mission expressed its surprise that so few congregations had become extinct, given reductions of Board support in some districts by as much as two-thirds during the 1880s and 1890s. By 1906 the Mission still received the largest single share of ABCFM funding, but that share had diminished significantly from earlier times as the American Board accelerated its activities elsewhere, most notably in the Far East. Rev. Ernest Pye, assigned to the Marsovan Seminary, advised the Board that “the evangelical ministry in our own field is being starved out of existence.”30 Seeking ways to enhance the Seminary’s appeal, its director, Edward Riggs, assisted by Anatolia dean George White and the newly appointed (1905) Theodore Elmer, decided to restructure the theological training so as to permit Anatolia seniors to take college and seminary courses simultaneously and thereby obtain both degrees in a shorter time. Although a few more students were thus induced to follow theological instruction, the results were disappointing. The Seminary’s inability to attract students revived the old controversy over its Marsovan location. Proposals were again advanced from other stations to concentrate theological training in western Turkey in a more prominent city. Even Edward Riggs, whose life work had been the Seminary, acknowledged that it was beset by a crisis and that it might be time to consolidate the several theological schools in Turkey in a single location. Riggs cited as a particular handicap the lack of cooperation from native Protestants and missionaries in the western half of the mission field who had never accepted the Marsovan location. The result was to restrict the Seminary’s effective range to only three interior stations.31 NEW EDUCATIONAL HORIZONS American educators at Marsovan lamented what they saw as weakness in spiritual values, a drift toward worldliness and materialism that turned students away from the ministry. On the other hand, the vigorous expansion of the College and the Girls School brought them great satisfaction. As committed as they were to the evangelical call to save souls, the men and women sent to Marsovan could not help but be swayed by the opportunities for bettering the conditions of life for children whose families petitioned them fervently. The scope of evangelical work broadened



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

107

steadily as its practitioners came to harbor fewer doubts that in elevating the material and cultural level of native peoples they were carrying out the Lord’s will. The proliferation of educational, medical, and other humanitarian activities shifted the focus of the Marsovan work while enlarging its objectives. The College and Girls School reached a combined enrollment of close to seven hundred, mostly boarders, far exceeding earlier expectations, and with a total teaching staff of sixty. The expanding hospital, the King School for the Deaf, the kindergarten and primary school, the Self-Help Department, the campus bookstore, associated elementary schools in the town, one for Gypsy children, and branches of the Young Men’s Christian Association brought the total lay personnel to nearly two hundred. Over a thousand people worked or studied at the station compound. The Seminary with its few ordained ministers and handful of students inevitably became overshadowed. As Professor of Theology Ioannes Xenidis remarked, as a result of Anatolia’s expansion, “the Seminary often got what was spared from the College.” The steady shift toward a wider spectrum of educational and philanthropic purposes was perhaps more pronounced than in other mission districts due to the size and influence of Marsovan’s schools and hospital and the more advanced cultural level of its Christian communities. However, a similar tendency was apparent elsewhere, both in Turkey and in more distant mission fields. The parallel trend within Muslim society had gained momentum from the late 1800s as the Ottoman state founded higher technical schools, expanded elementary and secondary education, and established the first Turkish university in Constantinople in 1900.32 The American missionaries in Turkey, seeing their educational endeavors growing in importance every year and drawing them irresistibly into the realm of social benevolence, increasingly welcomed it as their natural sphere of activity. Pure proselytizing had reached a dead end, however reluctant they were to reflect on that reality given its continued centrality for their official sponsors in America. Even many of the older generation, such as Edward Riggs and Charles Tracy, had come to believe that their true mission was to develop Christian education and benevolence through schools, publications, and hospitals, even though, as they acknowledged at times, such work might be at cross-purposes to the aims of the Seminary. Tracy accepted this circumstance with equanimity; for him there was a seamless unity between the Gospel, moral purity, and the highest accomplishments of civilization. He pronounced the “mission college enterprise, now coming to be appreciated in its true significance, one of the greatest entered upon since the opening of the Christian era.” Its aim, according to the Anatolia catalogue, was “the symmetrical development of the spiritual, the intellectual and the physical in the students.”

108

Chapter 3

Not all missionaries were in accord with this trend toward more secular pursuits. Theodore Elmer believed that “we think too much of education and social reform, but not enough of a knowledge of God only.” He was not alone in these concerns. Occasional opposition to the secularizing trend also appeared among evangelical converts. For example, Stephanos Sirinidis, pastor of the Zinjirdere Evangelical Church in the Caesaria area, sent his three sons to Anatolia despite his concern over growing infidelity to religious tenets in modern education. He wrote to the Prudential Committee in protest against a weakening theology and subsequently severed his relationship with the mission. Nonetheless, the shift was clearly toward education as the central focus of missionary endeavors, with the Marsovan team in the vanguard of this new orientation. George White went so far as to inform the Board’s foreign secretary, “We have sometimes seriously raised the question of discontinuing wholly our efforts to give theological instruction here. That might open the way to operate, for example, a commercial or agricultural department in the college.” Reflecting this new emphasis, the Western Turkey Mission in 1908 established an educational commission to elevate this area of work, appointing George White as its president. The commission recommended that missionary institutions adapt their courses of study to the contemporary needs of Turkish society by offering more practical subjects, such as agriculture and engineering, and include manual training.33 Fast-moving events from the turn of the century accelerated the pace of change. The political upheaval in Turkey against autocratic rule in 1908 and the replacement of the Sultan the following year by a constitutional government under the Committee of Union and Progress, commonly termed the “Young Turks,” promised a new era of democratic reforms. Though it ultimately proved to be a false spring, its early stages eased police controls and restrictions on such activities as travel and new construction. Censorship was lifted, news publications began to flourish, and relations among religious and ethnic groups became more amicable. George White recorded in 1911 that five newspapers were published in Marsovan, whereas only three years earlier there had been none. Anatolia alumni were editing two publications in other locations, including the first in the Armenian language treating medical and hygienic subjects. Marsovan for the first time had a Christian district governor as well as three Anatolia alumni on its municipal council. The governor broke all precedent by sponsoring a play performed in Anatolia’s auditorium by the local YMCA for the benefit of a Turkish school and attended by leading Muslims. On the other hand, the ambiguity of the new freedoms was manifested when the same high official, responding to complaints by military officers, obliged Anatolia to discharge an Armenian instructor



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

109

who exceeded discretion when relating Turkey’s defeat by Russia in 1878 in a public lecture at the College. This incident illustrates the rising tension between imported Enlightenment concepts and the ultimately more powerful influence of nationalism, also flowing from the West. This latter force that now energized the empire’s ethnic-religious groups was destined to reshape the political configuration of the Ottoman lands.34 The relaxation of restrictions, though always uncertain, eased the barriers to expansion. After the searing experiences of the early 1890s demonstrated the unfeasibility of grounding Anatolia upon a single national community, efforts turned toward enhancing both the size and diversity of the student body. A larger student population drawn from a wider geographical area increased tuition revenues and thereby enabled the College to provide better services and become less reliant upon uncertain donations from abroad. It also ensured a greater mix of nationalities, thereby checking the tendency for any single ethnic or religious group to dominate.35 A COSMOPOLITAN FACULTY Such changes in circumstances and outlook shaped the development of a faculty able to instruct an expanding and diverse student body. Anatolia’s location and its outreach to different ethnic groups required that it develop a wider range of language competencies than other American Board institutions in Turkey with a less multilingual clientele. It was important for students to achieve proficiency in their vernacular language and its literature. This goal also served the mission’s high priority of equipping pupils with the requisite skills to lead local evangelical churches. The College needed faculty equipped to offer instruction in Armenian, Greek, and Turkish, the last serving as the vernacular for some Christians but also required by law. Russian was added in 1913 as more youth arrived from the north. All students pursued English throughout their Anatolia years. It was considered the lingua franca of the College and the language graduates would need to pursue further studies in foreign seminaries or universities. However, French was the most widely used Western language in Turkey, reflecting the long flow of influences from France to Turkey’s educated classes. Applicants for commercial employment in the larger towns were at an advantage by knowing French. Ever mindful of competition from Catholic institutions, which far outnumbered those founded by Protestant missionaries, including the Jesuit school in Marsovan, Anatolia offered French instruction from its first years. The heavy concentration on languages, of course, entailed costs for instructors and materials. Edward Riggs found it necessary to defend to the Board the inclusion of French in the curriculum.36

110

Chapter 3

At Anatolia, with its ancillary activities swelled, the three or four resident missionaries became ever more involved in management and related duties, leaving most of the teaching to others. Its founders had foreseen the need to develop a multilingual native faculty with advanced skills and accordingly invested in sending abroad for higher training the most promising instructors, most often drawn from among young alumni. In time, they became seasoned members of a polyglot faculty that, by 1913, included thirty-two members. Six academic departments were headed by “native” professors whose remuneration was roughly equivalent to that of their senior American colleagues. The College strengthened their attachment by assisting them to occupy campus residences or purchase adjacent lots to erect homes. A series of young American college graduates, normally on three-year tutoring assignments, taught the large number of English-language classes. Appointments of mostly Swiss Protestant teachers met the needs for French language. Rev. Felix Margot was followed in 1900 by Emmanuel Presset’s long tenure. Mr. Marchetich came from Batum to teach Russian, succeeded in 1913 by Gregory Chekaloff, following George White’s exploratory trip to Russia’s southern provinces. As enrollment surged unpredictably in Anatolia’s later years, a common expedient was to tap recent graduates for trial appointments to the faculty, thereby keeping instructional costs within bounds.37 The faculty, in which Americans formed a minority, exercised substantial direction over the academic program, subject to approval by the exclusively American Board of Managers. All faculty members were entitled to vote in its deliberations. The spirit of unity and cooperation among the teaching staff, frequently lauded in station reports, was an essential precondition for this college community dedicated to harmonious interaction among ethnic and religious elements that elsewhere dwelled in discord.38 The following list of faculty and staff attests both to their cosmopolitan character and to the range of the curriculum. Anatolia College Faculty 1908–1909 Rev. Charles C. Tracy, D.D., President of Faculty Rev. George E. White, D.D., Dean (Political Economy, International Law) Rev. Edward Riggs, D.D. Rev. T. A. Elmer D. K. Getchell (Rhetoric) J. K. Marden, M.D. (Surgeon in Hospital and Physician in College) Alden Hoover, M.D. (Associate Surgeon and Physician) J. J. Manissadjian, M.Sc. (Professor of Natural Science)



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

111

A. G. Sivaslian, Ph.D. (Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy; Librarian) Demetrios Theocharides, M.A. (Professor of Greek Language and Literature) V. H. Hagopian, M.A. (Professor of Turkish Language and Literature) Emmanuel Presset, (Professor of French Language and Literature) Rev. J. P. Xenides, M.A. (Professor of History, Mental and Moral Philosophy) K. H. Gulian, A.B. (Armenian Language and Literature) A. D. Daghlian, A.B. (Musical Director, Instructor in Penmanship and Drawing) J. G. Statiropoulos, Ph.D. (Chemistry and Physics) H. H. Kabakjian, A.B. (Turkish, Mathematics) Leo C. Lake (English) C. V. Constantinides, A.B. (Instructor in English and Turkish) P. M. Metropoulos, A.B. (Instructor in Greek) Vahan M. Mirakian (Instructor in Armenian) Yeprem N. Astigian (Instructor in Turkish) A. Ioakimides (Assistant in Home) H. K. Jedidian (Assistant in Home) C. S. Demetracopoulos (Assistant in Home) N. L. Nerso (Master in Self-Help Department)39 Within the Anatolia compound, an institutional culture evolved that separated its participants from the surrounding society as sharply as its high walls closed them off from the adjacent town. It had evolved over time into a unique fusion of several elements, including Protestantism of an increasingly liberal strain; the educational model of the American church-related college; and the polyglot array of Near Eastern peoples and worldviews. The missionary leaders, now of advanced age, demonstrated a rare capacity to adapt the College to changing circumstances and the practical needs of their students. The steady procession of young American college graduates serving for a few years as tutors provided an inflow of youthful energy, new intellectual trends, and the latest practices from their home campuses. The Midwestern colleges where most of them had studied, mainly Carleton, Grinnell, and Oberlin, continued to exercise a profound influence upon Anatolia while modifying somewhat its original New England outlook. Grinnell alumnus George White wrote: “Our college model is that of Oberlin or such institutions in the home land, which do so much for the whole nation in every way.” Finally, the rising aspirations of the several ethnic groups that composed most of the faculty, service personnel, and student body influenced the curriculum and the diverse culture that engulfed Anatolia.40

112

Chapter 3

AN EVOLVING CURRICULUM Originally intended primarily to prepare graduates for further instruction, preferably at the Marsovan Seminary, Anatolia’s curriculum was progressively redesigned to meet student demand for occupational training and with the realization that the great majority would depart for employment before the senior year. Accordingly, the program of studies evolved to emphasize three areas: languages, the major arts and sciences taught in American colleges, and subjects relating to business and public administration as practiced in Turkey. During the preparatory years, emphasis was on English, Turkish, the student’s native language, and mathematics, with additional courses in art, music, and geography. Initially a two-year sequence, the preparatory division expanded to three years in 1891 and four in 1907. Although Anatolia’s leaders would have preferred to concentrate their resources on higher education, they were obliged by the limited qualifications of many entering students to strengthen preparatory training. While mission schools at Trebizond, Sivas, Talas, Yozgat, and other towns served as feeder schools, other applicants came from districts lacking the level of education required for admission, particularly English-language proficiency. The popular demand for intermediate-level instruction leading directly to employment also contributed to inducing the Marsovan educators to expand such training. It is noteworthy that the preparatory segment of the curriculum was not referred to as a “high school,” even though it corresponded to that level of studies. The reason, very likely, was that the 1899 firman legitimizing Anatolia recognized the College itself as equivalent only to an idadi, or secondary school, under Ottoman law.41 Students entered the preparatory division at the minimum age of twelve following examinations in their native language, Turkish, geography, and arithmetic. Since most of them arrived not knowing English, emphasis was given to preparing them for the English curriculum. By the fourth year they were reading works by Macaulay and Tennyson. Graduates received a certificate valid for entry to the College’s freshman year, which also served as a useful credential for employment. As the preparatory division grew in size and stature, the post of principal was established in 1913. The first incumbent was Dana K. Getchell, a Carleton College alumnus who had arrived in 1899 and married his Marsovan colleague Susan Riggs. Together the Getchells managed the Home for younger boarders after the retirement of Sarah Sears Smith in 1905. By 1914, a total of 512 preparatory students had resided in the Home.42 In the four-year college, the student continued the study of his native language and literature through the junior year. French was taught for



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

113

three to five years, indicating its importance as the favored European language by major employers such as the French-controlled tobacco monopoly, the national railways, and the Ottoman Bank. Most other classes were conducted in English after the freshman year, including three year-long courses in mathematics, six semesters of physical and natural sciences, and substantial courses in history, philosophy, psychology, and rhetoric. Practically oriented subjects were commercial arithmetic, bookkeeping, surveying, and a three-year sequence of Turkish-language courses focused on Ottoman legal usages and official terminologies. This last segment corresponded to the state-prescribed curriculum for a school licensed as an idadi and also prepared students for state examinations to enter public administration, as a few did. It proved a difficult subject because of its Arabic script, particularly for youths from elementary schools where Greek or Armenian characters were used for Turkish-language instruction. The unavoidable concentration on several languages limited the remainder of the curriculum. Latin, for example, normally part of American college instruction at that time and usually required for graduate training in Europe and the United States, could not be included. The senioryear program for those pursuing the bachelor’s degree and preparing for postgraduate study emphasized science, philosophy, and religion, complemented by courses in psychology, political economy, and international law. The conscious endeavor to replicate the curriculum of leading American colleges was illustrated by George White’s introduction of a new subject, sociology, upon his return in 1910 from furlough in the United States. All students were required to follow a twenty-minute class in biblical instruction throughout their years at Anatolia following the daily morning prayers.43 In order to meet the priority of preparing future pastors and teachers, full attention was given to public speaking. Every student was expected to make eleven addresses during the course of the school year, in English, Turkish, and his native tongue. The most accomplished senior in each of the main languages delivered an oration at the annual graduation ceremony.44 The Anatolia Library, serving both College and Seminary, mirrored in its rich variety the curriculum it was designed to serve. Employing the Dewey classification system, the collection encompassed five languages. Through contributions and acquisitions, it grew to nearly ten thousand volumes, in addition to a variety of current periodicals. Rev. Ernest C. Pye assumed its management after 1911 and organized its relocation in the new library-museum building. The museum, with more than six thousand objects, functioned as an extension of the science department and was divided into two parts: the

114

Chapter 3

natural science collection of flora, fauna, and minerals assembled by Professor J. J. Manissadjian, and artifacts gathered by Anatolia’s Archeological Club. The former included about two thousand specimens of plants, mostly from the Marsovan region, and an extensive accumulation of butterflies and moths, many of them identified for the first time by Professor Manissadjian. The museum was open to the public and drew many visitors, who also admired the campus flower gardens, another creation of Professor “Manis.”45 In the later years of his presidency, Charles Tracy devoted his main attention to upgrading Anatolia’s facilities. George White as dean, and acting president during Tracy’s earlier absence in the United States to repair his health and seek funds for the College (1902–1905), largely oversaw the academic dimension. White aspired to institute at Anatolia the recommendations his Educational Commission had made to the Mission for a broader curriculum more in accord with the country’s needs. This would include a full commercial department for a student body of five hundred, the addition of subjects such as sociology and civics, and even an agricultural division. A related objective was to boost the government’s recognition of Anatolia as a secondary-level institution, under its 1899 imperial decree, to that of a full university (mektebi-i-ali).46 The Wickes Industrial Self-Help Department, important for enabling needy students to attend the College, blossomed further during these later years. Its production of furniture to supply the local market as well as the College’s own needs could not meet the heavy demand. Orders came from as far away as Constantinople. It began the manufacture of waterproof cement roofing tiles with materials imported from Russia. Its last major innovation was a flour mill and bakery to meet the requirements of the several hundred people who used the campus.47 AN INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY The student body’s ethnic mosaic colored all aspects of campus life. Armenian and Greek athletic and literary societies had flourished from the College’s first years. The Armenian Club called “Shavarshan” published a monthly journal, Nor Aik (New Dawn). The Greek group, named for the Pontus region, issued a periodical and prepared, in later years, a College handbook. Both societies organized musical units, the Shavarshan Orchestra and the Pontus Mandolinata. Similarly, an Ottoman Club named “Edebiye” was formed for native speakers of Turkish, and later a Russian Club was formed. All these groups held social events and awarded prizes for outstanding authorship, oratory, and achievements in sports. College rules required English to be spoken at meals, and its general use



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

115

was encouraged. Two campus branches of the YMCA, for Armenians and Greeks, drew many students. Between 1910 and 1912, three Jewish youths from southern Russia enrolled, widening the ethnic spectrum. Campus culture was further enriched by musical activities organized by Professor Arshag Daghlian, alumnus of 1896, an accomplished musician and composer trained at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Stuttgart, Germany. A male choir of thirty to fifty voices, a thirty-piece orchestra, a mixed chorus of over one hundred singers, and a brass band performed at commencement and other events. The full range of Anatolia’s musical accomplishments was put on display in a grand pageant celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary in June 1911. The region surrounding Marsovan proved to be rich in artifacts from past civilizations that no archeologist’s hand had touched. George White took the lead in organizing excursions to identify Hittite, Greek, Roman, and other remains and spurred research into their origins. The Archeology Club, with a membership of about sixty students and faculty, developed correspondence with the British Museum and other scientific bodies, while accumulating a collection of retrieved fragments for the campus museum. Faculty members gave weekly lectures open to the public on many subjects in English and Turkish, activities which George White characterized as a form of university extension offering.48 Athletics, not normally considered a proper activity for students in Turkey, became a vital part of Anatolia school life. Gymnastics had always been an adjunct to the curriculum. As the campus expanded through the acquisition of adjacent areas, to reach approximately thirty acres, it became possible to develop a quarter-mile running track and fields for soccer and baseball. Student ethnic societies fielded teams, with Greeks showing particular proficiency in soccer. Young American tutors, among them future Anatolia president Carl Compton from Grinnell College, introduced basketball, tennis, and baseball. Enthusiasm for sports continued to flourish even after George White suffered broken ribs in a collision with a husky young tutor during a match. The faculty’s intention was that athletics should advance physical well-being and principles of sportsmanship. Field Day became a tradition, with tournaments for all sporting events. The annual Mountain Day combined an excursion with challenging climbs to nearby summits.49 To shape a compliant student community from diverse ethnic components demanded certain conditions, as the veteran missionaries well knew from experience. Most students entered Anatolia via the preparatory division in their early teens when behavior could be more easily shaped. Since the number reaching the highest college classes remained relatively small, the proportion of younger boys was always larger. The

116

Chapter 3

great majority were boarders who came wholly under college supervision while in residence. Under such circumstances, an encompassing institutional culture was created. Its central focus was on developing individual character according to the predominant values of Protestant communities and colleges in contemporary New England and the American Midwest, emphasizing piety, honesty, manliness, moral and intellectual discipline, and self-reliance. Perhaps most important for influencing behavior was the College’s policy of strictness coupled with respect for the cultural heritages of its several nationalities. Frequent expulsions were carried out in the knowledge that the resulting vacancies would be quickly oversubscribed. Prohibitions against profanity, gambling, tobacco, and alcohol were firmly enforced, not infrequently by whippings. Edward Riggs, one of two American professors on the Discipline Committee, which also included two Armenian faculty members and one Greek, noted that “our very strict, some would say puritanical, moral standard and discipline, which we supposed would repel students, has had the opposite effect.” Parents repeatedly declared that policy to be a prime reason for sending their sons to Anatolia. In his personal memoir, an alumnus recalls positively the morning assemblies where those with outstanding conduct were honored every term before the entire student body and awarded a “star.” The greatest challenge to discipline occurred shortly after the political upheaval of 1908. Students demanded that the new freedoms then proclaimed should extend to a relaxation of college rules, including the elimination of the English proficiency test for those entering the senior year. The faculty was put to a severe test on this occasion, but its firmness overcame the rebellious effort as thirty-eight students were dismissed at the end of the school year. Not all schools endured such trials so successfully; another college to the east was closed for some months. Symbolizing the sense of order that Anatolia had brought to Marsovan was the Swiss clock mounted atop the belfry tower of Main Hall in 1902. First neighboring schools, and before long most of the town, responded to its chimes by adopting the Western system of marking time.50 Other than in rare times of crisis, day-to-day issues of campus life were what might be expected of teenaged boys at that time, such as how wide dormitory windows should be left open, regularity in shaving, and complaints that the cook Boghos served the spicy meat, pasturma, only once a week. School life naturally had its lighter side, as reflected in the Students’ Hand Book for 1913. In “The Song of the Junior,” an upperclassman advises a student one year behind him: “My Sophomoric friend; Let me admonish you that, in your incipient manhood, by yourself you set not too great store, while on your cheek and chin the keen razor gathers a harvest of dew and nothing more.”



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

117

Prepared by an ethnically mixed student team under the supervision of Professor J. G. Stratiropoulos, the Hand Book, besides College information, included Ottoman postal rates, national currencies with their values in gold piastres and French francs, parliamentary procedures, the conversion of British Imperial weights and measures to their Turkish equivalents, the “Approximate Time Needed for Digestion of Some Foods,” and “Rules of Etiquette for the Vest-Pocket.” The last proffered such useful social pointers as, “Don’t ask questions about the price of the furniture,” “Don’t wipe your face with your napkin; it is for the lips and beard only,” and “Don’t use hair dye, hair oil or pomades.”51 One of the principal aims of the College administration was to keep the inevitable tensions among ethnic and religious groups within reasonable bounds and create an overriding ethos emphasizing Christian values and camaraderie among fellow students. If the results were less than perfect, they were nonetheless nothing short of extraordinary, given the universal segregation of ethnic groups in Turkey. In one instance, Greek senior students led a successful effort to meet tuition costs for a talented Armenian classmate who faced having to leave the College for want of funds. Probably the most important asset for securing a cooperative student body was the faculty’s close involvement through small classes and rigorous requirements and their patient concern for the personal advancement and well-being of every young man. Professor Xenides commented: “The students are very critical and difficult to please, yet they are very appreciative if one can only succeed in winning their attention and sympathy and in arousing their interest.” During the few years allowed it by world events, Anatolia advanced remarkably far in demonstrating the feasibility of replacing racial discord with amity within a multiethnic school community.52 THE GIRLS SCHOOL The Anatolia Girls School evolved as a self-contained institution with its own premises covering over four-and-a-half acres on the southern section of the mission compound, including classrooms, dormitory, small gymnasium, teachers’ quarters, athletic courts, and surrounding gardens. It was overseen by a board of directors composed of the Marsovan missionaries, subject to the higher authority of the ABCFM’s Women’s Board of Missions. From 1898 the school was directed by the firm and able Charlotte Willard, heading a faculty of American, Armenian, and Greek teachers. Originally designed to prepare future pastors’ wives, its goals broadened as local Christian communities came to appreciate the value of female education. The Girls School aspired to develop self-respect and

118

Chapter 3

strong character among its charges while providing education formerly restricted to males. Its enrollment, though smaller than Anatolia’s, rose at a comparable rate, reaching 186 in 1908 and 243 in 1913. Although its main building, Fritcher Hall, erected through the indemnity paid by the Ottoman state after the 1893 fire, was one of the finest in the mission compound, it could not house the rapidly increasing enrollment. Classes had to be held in every available space and boarders lodged in missionary homes and the gymnasium, until the adjoining South Hall, accommodating up to seventy older girls, was completed in 1910. Over half of the students came from Marsovan as day scholars, accounting for the continuing high proportion of Armenians to Greeks (71 percent versus 28 percent in 1908), by contrast to the boys school. The academic program, while reflecting new currents in American education, was shaped primarily by the realities of provincial Ottoman society and the expectations of the school’s clientele. Marriage and motherhood were universal goals. The prevalence of marriage in the mid-teens for females and the rarity of employment outside the home led most girls to depart before completing the full secondary curriculum. Such circumstances forestalled any possibility of the Girls School becoming a collegelevel institution. Adapting to those realities while aspiring to modify them, the school in 1910 boosted its preparatory years from three to four as a separate division accommodating girls who would not continue for the four-year senior high school. At the same time, the Department of Domestic Science was introduced to teach such skills as cooking, sewing, and dressmaking. This last skill proved so popular among the women of Marsovan that the separate Dressmaking Department was formed. Of those who completed the full eight years and received the secondary diploma, about one-third found employment as primary school teachers. As of 1912, the School could count fifty-three teachers and seven nurses among its former students, while twenty had become wives of evangelical ministers. Upper-level classes featured five languages, mathematics, elementary science, scriptural study, history, and music as well as homemaking arts, with most classes taught in English. Senior students took instruction in teaching methods, ethics, and psychology and gained practice teaching in the mission’s Sunday schools. Following the 1910 revision of the curriculum, the School was described as encompassing something over one year of college work. The attention given to physical exercise and athletics marked a sharp departure from the popular conception of acceptable female education. Those activities had to be conducted mostly indoors because of taboos against girls exercising within public view. Emphasis was placed on inculcating values to shape family life according to Protestant tenets and elevate the role of wife and mother. Students



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

119

were assigned domestic duties in the closely organized boarding unit and, in the School’s later years, even assumed some governance responsibilities. It was intended that they should develop strong personalities so as to exercise leadership in evangelical circles. Although coeducation was not a possibility, given social constraints, female students were less confined than perhaps anywhere else in provincial Ottoman society. They had access to mixed religious services, lectures, musical events and to the library and museum in the presence of males. Older girls participated in social gatherings with campus families and, on rare occasions, with their male counterparts. One such annual event was Thanksgiving Day when collections were taken up for the poor of Marsovan. The staff was built around a core of long-term personnel: Principal Charlotte R. Willard, Mary A. Ward, Anna Filician, and Prampion Gureghian, supplemented by Anatolia professors, missionary wives, short-term American appointees, and a changing cast of local Armenian and Greek teachers. They supervised not only the School itself but also nursing instruction, the King School for the Deaf, and an English-language kindergarten. The School met approximately 70 percent of its expenses from tuition and boarding fees, the remainder provided largely by the Woman’s Board of Missions. Families funded their daughters’ costs in most cases, though nearly one in four received financial aid from the School. Charlotte Willard’s efforts to seek an endowment in later years were stymied by World War I.53 The following list shows the staff when the School had reached its zenith. Girls School Instructors 1911–1912 Charlotte R. Willard, A.B., Principal Mary A. Ward, A.B., Science Claribel Platt, A.B., Music and English Alice B. Caldwell, B.L., Mathematics and English Mrs. A. R. Hoover, Domestic Science Prof. D. Theocharides, M.A., Greek* Prof. K. H. Gulian, A.B., Armenian* Prof. A. D. Daghlian, A.B., Piano* Anna Filician, Matron and Instructor in Bible Makrouhi Azarian, Armenian Sima Kouyoumjian, Housekeeper and Instructor in Turkish Floritsa Kazezian, English Margaret Chrysakis, Greek Lusaper Dorikian, Nurse and Instructor in Hygiene

120

Chapter 3

Galene Philadelphevs, Instructor of the Deaf Andromache Ioannou, Greek Mathematics Shnorhig Klydjian, Piano and Organ Gulumia Chinegoezian, English and Bible Lusaper Zobian, Armenian and Turkish Armine Gulian, Armenian Mathematics Marie Papazian, Dressmaking Vasiliki Kantarji, Primary Greek Department54 * From Anatolia College Faculty RISING POLITICAL TENSIONS Anatolia’s accomplishment in creating a harmonious campus community from disparate elements was especially striking in view of the uncongenial political environment. Charles Tracy devoted prodigious efforts to cultivating amicable relations with local Ottoman officials, with evident success during periods of relative normalcy. The College carefully avoided any actions that might offend Ottoman sensitivities or suggest disloyalty to the government. On one occasion, when brought into contact with a graduate who headed a band of armed Armenian revolutionaries, Tracy urged the youth to employ prudence. His advice was not heeded, the group was forcibly disbanded, and their leader killed in an encounter with police. Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s measures to strengthen and modernize Turkey under his autocratic rule included improvements in education, especially the founding of new schools for Muslims. During the last decade of his forceful reign (1876–1909), a rising animus toward Christian schools spurred new restrictions and closer state surveillance. In 1902 an overzealous official imprisoned six Anatolia students in the regional center of Amasia for nearly a year for allegedly using subversive books from the College’s library. From 1911, Turkey was constantly at war with Christian states that sought to detach territories from the eroding empire, making internal tensions more acute and driving the Young Turk government toward a more nationalist and authoritarian stance. Anatolia’s leaders strove to prevent these strains from disrupting the College, even yielding to the importunities of local officials to make monetary contributions to Turkey’s war efforts. When pressures intensified, Anatolia and other mission schools frequently appealed to the U.S. Embassy to invoke treaty rights in their defense, while the American Board exercised influence at high levels in Washington, D.C.



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

121

Under the reforms of the Young Turk government in 1909, Christians became subject to military service. Anatolia was generally successful in securing exemptions for its students until 1913. However, fear of conscription and of mistreatment within the Ottoman ranks caused more Christians to emigrate. Anxiety was further heightened by new killings of Armenians in the Cilicia region in 1909 and mounting violence between Armenians and Kurds in Turkey’s eastern provinces, though those troubles did not directly affect Marsovan. Applications to Anatolia soared as concerned parents sought to secure their sons and prepare them for any eventuality.55 EFFORTS TO REACH MUSLIMS The most ambitious feature of the vision that Charles Tracy and his colleagues formed of Anatolia as a multinational learning community was that it should encompass Muslims. Sporadic efforts over the years to enlist Turkish students had failed, largely because of opposition both by Ottoman officialdom and the Muslim public. In the very few instances where they did enroll, difficulties in assimilating to Christian college life led to their early departure. In Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s later years, prohibitions against Muslims attending Christian institutions were strictly enforced. Officials obliged a Circassian day student to withdraw from Anatolia in 1902 and a Turkish boarding student to depart in 1904. The Young Turk revolution of 1908 introduced an abrupt change, easing ethnic relations for a time and removing the bars against Muslims entering schools like Anatolia.56 The significance of admitting Turks went beyond the simple inclusion of yet another ethnic group for the obvious reason of their religious identity. The American Board had never abandoned its objective of evangelizing the vast Muslim population. On the contrary, it was reasserted perennially, though usually with the caveat that the right time for pressing the cause had not yet arrived. The Board addressed this goal with renewed vigor in the early years of the new century, as disappointment with the meager results of evangelization in Ottoman lands mounted. In 1906 an unprecedented conference of Protestant missionaries worldwide met in Cairo with great discretion to deliberate on strategies to evangelize Muslims. The Western Turkey Mission was represented by George Herrick, Anatolia’s former president. That same year, Rev. James L. Barton, foreign secretary of the American Board, proposed at the centennial celebration of the Haystack Prayer Meeting renewed and more direct initiatives to bring Christ to Muslims.57

122

Chapter 3

In response to overtures from the Board, the members of the Western Turkey Mission debated with some intensity the question of adopting more overt efforts to evangelize Muslims. Their reply to the Board stressed the precarious position of the missionaries and the evangelical communities, given the heightened sensitivity of the Ottoman regime toward what it regarded as Christian importunities. The Mission advised therefore against any precipitate action that might “plunge into peril and destruction” its accomplishments in Turkey, reiterating its belief that evangelizing the “nominally Christian races” remained the best means for ultimately reaching Mohammedans. At the same time, the mission recommended some preparatory steps to be taken with caution so as not to excite Ottoman suspicions, such as training a corps of young missionaries in Turkish, Arabic, and the tenets of Islam to lead a future effort. In the continuing deliberations on this issue, the Western Turkey Mission took a consistently more reserved position than its colleagues in eastern and central Turkey.58 The new freedoms introduced following the revolt of 1908 opened the way for Anatolia to admit Turkish students. For the missionaries, this was an opportunity both to extend the College’s influence by drawing members of Turkey’s largest and ruling ethnic group and to demonstrate to their American sponsors a significant breakthrough for delivering the Gospel message to their ultimate target. Anatolia’s reputation drew applications from a small but growing number of Turkish families, particularly those enamored by the new reforms. By the fall of 1913, sixteen Muslims had enrolled at Anatolia and seven in the Girls School, unthinkable only a few years earlier. However, an initiative to begin a Turkish kindergarten failed to draw children.59 The presence of Muslim students inevitably raised questions about their adaptation to a Christian school and its religious observances. Charles Tracy addressed these issues, asserting religious freedom as the College’s fundamental principle, while insisting upon its compatibility with “the most earnest religious teaching.” Any change in an individual’s faith should result from inner conviction and not from coercion. On the other hand, Muslims could not be segregated from other Anatolia students; they would attend the daily prayers and Bible classes that were obligatory for all. But the Muslim student would not be obliged “to use any words or forms, or to take any attitudes inconsistent with his personal religion,” and would not be hindered from attending religious services at the town mosque. As broadly tolerant as that framework must have seemed to Tracy and his colleagues, it was inevitably challenged by Muslim families who requested that their sons and daughters be exempted from Christian prayers. When the school held firm, over half of the Muslim contingent, mostly day students from Marsovan, withdrew. George White related



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

123

the incident to the Board in Boston as demonstrating how “difficult and protracted” the task of establishing working relations between Christians and Muslims would be.60 The high point of Anatolia’s campaign to create a heterogeneous community based upon religious and cultural tolerance within a flexible Christian framework was probably reached in the fall of 1913, just after Tracy’s retirement. The governor of the province, making a rare visit to Marsovan, called upon the College with a retinue of officials. He addressed the student body and attended a reception with Anatolia’s Muslim students, their male family members and the entire faculty. An adherent of the current reformist movement, the governor heard with evident satisfaction that Anatolia’s purpose was not only to draw individuals to Christ but also to render fraternal service to the people of Turkey. George White, just then succeeding Tracy as president, characterized the event as equivalent to a public declaration that “Christian missionaries and Mohammedan Turks have reached a basis for friendly cooperation.” White even agreed to consider the governor’s request that Muslim students be provided with religious instruction in their own faith.61 THE ANATOLIA PRODUCT: ITS ALUMNI The great majority of Anatolia students departed before qualifying for a degree. Their usual intention was to acquire languages and other skills for employment or emigration. In some cases, their families could not afford the cost of continued studies. The average length of attendance in the early 1900s was less than three years. Of the approximately 2,217 students who enrolled by the fall of 1914, only 316 (14 percent) received baccalaureate degrees. Commenting on the student turnover, George White remarked that “our work is something like teaching school in a railroad station.”62 School records document the vocational choices of those graduates, 252 in number, who were still living in 1910. The largest proportion (36 percent) was employed as merchants or businessmen. This was no surprise since most students came from business families. The greatest opportunities lay in trade, transportation, commercial agencies, banking, flour milling, and the weaving, dyeing, and tanning industries. One enterprising Armenian alumnus had utilized bituminous coal from deposits nearby that heated campus buildings and in later years fueled a new railway. The next largest group was composed of educators (29 percent), including fifteen who were teaching at Anatolia or its related schools in Marsovan. Others found posts in the expanding number of Gregorian, Orthodox, and Evangelical schools. For example, Hovhannes Dingilian of

124

Chapter 3

the class of 1904 joined the faculty of Euphrates College at Harpout, while two alumni taught at the Boys High School in Smyrna. The third largest occupational category encompassed doctors and dentists (15 percent), influenced undoubtedly by the work of Anatolia’s hospital. The favorite training center was the medical school of the Syrian Protestant College (later the American University) in Beirut, although a few found their way to American universities such as Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and the state universities of Michigan and Minnesota. Twenty active preachers from Anatolia held pulpits throughout the country. Most of them had trained at the Marsovan Seminary, but some had won scholarships to American theological schools. They became leaders of evangelical communities scattered among Turkey’s towns and villages. An example is Achilles Yoakimides ’93. Following training at the Marsovan Seminary, he first directed the elementary school at Ordu and then, after further study at the University of Athens, became pastor successively of churches in Adrianople and Ordu. Andreas Yfantides ’90 held the pulpit in the village of Bey Alan for over twenty years and dispensed health care as well. Anatolia’s alumni were dispersed widely. Except for those teaching at Marsovan, only fourteen resided there in 1910. About a third had left Turkey, mostly for the United States (26 percent). Those remaining were largely found in major port towns on the Black Sea or in regional centers such as Ordu, Amasia, Sivas, and Talas. Alumni who became pastors were mostly located in villages of the larger Marsovan region as were many of the teachers. Occupations offering few opportunities for Anatolia alumni, largely because of their minority status, were law, politics, journalism, the military, and civil service. Coming mostly from provincial middle-class backgrounds, few, if any, seem to have achieved prominence in prestigious merchant firms, banking houses, or other elite circles concentrated primarily in Constantinople and Smyrna.63 What was the actual level of education at Anatolia? How high were its standards of instruction? These questions cannot be answered with any great precision. One reason lies in the College’s continuous evolution as it expanded, improved its resources, and raised its requirements. In 1886, when the high school added one year and called itself a college, it cannot have gone far beyond the secondary level. By 1907, those qualifying for the degree had completed four full “college” years following the four-year preparatory phase. The curriculum of the college segment was designed to approximate that of American undergraduate colleges and universities. The small minority who remained to complete the program graduated usually at age twenty-one or twenty-two. Another difficulty in gauging Anatolia’s educational level was the absence of any formal system of assessment or validation to which it was ac-



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

125

countable. Anatolia’s permit from the Ottoman government recognized it only as a secondary-level institution, a circumstance that would not seem to be a true measure of academic stature. Efforts by Mission headquarters in Constantinople with Ottoman educational authorities to raise Anatolia’s recognition to university level (mektebi-i-ali) did not reach fruition. There is no doubt that the College strived to achieve academic excellence, for instance, by sending faculty abroad for training, investing in a multi-language library, readily dismissing non-achievers, and requiring a thesis for graduation. On the other hand, the allocation of many class hours to language study, unavoidable given the cosmopolitan student body, restricted the remaining curriculum. Professor Xenides noted the sometimes unsatisfactory results from trying to master too many subjects. The need for new instructors was frequently met by tapping recent alumni without postgraduate training or teaching experience. George White expressed dissatisfaction with the equipment for science instruction, which probably was a weaker area of the curriculum. There is ample evidence from the level of texts used and samples of student writing that those completing the college curriculum achieved advanced mastery of English.64 One validation of Anatolia’s educational standards, though not an exact measure, may be found in the achievements of its graduates. As noted above, many were admitted for advanced studies at leading Western universities. The following sketches from the last two decades before the onset of the Great War convey something about alumni destinies. Dikran Kabakjian from Yozgat graduated in 1896 and went on to complete a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He became a full professor there and a leader in radium research.65 Lucas Petrou Kyrides (1883–1978) came from a Protestant family in Brusa in western Turkey that had earlier migrated from Ioannina in the northwest corner of the Greek peninsula. Following his older sister, Aspasia, to Marsovan where she finished the Girls School and afterward taught there, Lucas received his bachelor’s degree in 1902. As salutatorian of his class, he shared the annual prize in philosophy with classmate and valedictorian, A. H. Tashjian. The following year, he was appointed to the Anatolia faculty to teach Greek and English. He then enrolled for postgraduate studies at the University of Michigan where he struggled financially but earned a doctorate in 1909. Kyrides became one of the leading figures in developing new applications in organic chemistry. Instrumental in the founding of Miles Laboratories and the Monsanto Company, and director of research in organic chemistry at the latter, he held scores of patents for organic dyes, synthetic detergents, and insecticides. His most acclaimed achievements were a mercury cure for syphilis and an important role in developing synthetic rubber during World War

126

Chapter 3

II. The American Chemical Society in 1945 awarded Kyrides its first Gold Medal. He retired in Athens and became a leading benefactor of his, by then, relocated alma mater.66 Armenag H. Tashjian, who shared 1902 commencement honors with Kyrides, was the son of an Armenian pastor from Smyrna. He worked his way through Anatolia in its carpentry shop and after graduation taught for a year at the College before entering the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he again worked to meet expenses. He became a member of MIT’s faculty and later a leading architect in Cleveland.67 Athanasios (Thanassis) H. Aghnides (1889–1984), from Nigde in southern Turkey, graduated in 1908. After further studies at the Ottoman Imperial Law School in Constantinople and the Sorbonne in Paris, he joined the Secretariat of the League of Nations (1919) and was successively director of its Disarmament Section (1932) and Under Secretary General of the League. A leading protagonist of the campaign for worldwide disarmament in the 1930s, he conducted negotiations with national leaders including Hitler and Mussolini. After serving as Greece’s ambassador to London during World War II, he represented Greece at the founding of the United Nations organization in 1945. For the next twenty years Aghnides held high positions with the United Nations, before retiring in Geneva in his late seventies.68 Raphael S. Demos (1891–1968) was the son of Stratos Demetracopoulos, whose family had come to Turkey from the village of Portaria on Mt. Pelion, just outside independent Greece’s first borders. Stratos converted to Protestantism and became an Evangelical pastor at a small church in Constantinople where he and his wife, Anna, raised a family. Raphael graduated from Anatolia in 1910, winning both the senior academic prize and the award for the best thesis. After working at Anatolia for two years as assistant librarian, he won a scholarship to study philosophy at Harvard University, receiving his doctorate in 1916. Following further study in France and England, he returned to a faculty appointment at Harvard where he held the Alford Chair of Moral Philosophy, Natural Religion and Civil Polity. In his later years he joined the Anatolia College Board of Trustees.69 Other Anatolians from this same era warrant mention. Vahan S. Babanisian from Samsun, class of 1895, became a ranking professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Ioannes G. Statiropoulos ’99 from Germir received his Ph.D. from Yale University and returned to teach chemistry at Anatolia. Nicholas P. Aghnides, brother of Athanasios, left Anatolia after his junior year (1904) to complete studies in law in Constantinople and afterward earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University. An authority on Islamic law and finance, he became a successful investor in New York. Edward H. Bedrosian ’04 from Marsovan forged a career as physician in Phila-



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

127

delphia. Constantine S. Demos, brother of Raphael and also in the class of 1910, became an electrical engineer in Ohio. Achileas Hadjisavas ’07, described by Anatolia’s later president Carl Compton as a mathematical genius, studied at MIT before returning to Greece to manage the railway in Thessaly. Christopher Mobias (originally Mubayajoglou) from Urgub left Anatolia in 1914 after his junior year, studied dentistry at Pennsylvania State University, and pursued that profession in America. While most ambitious alumni clearly aimed at the more prestigious professions, there were exceptions. Student records indicate that Sisag K. Eumurian of the class of 1894, after teaching music at Anatolia for four years, immigrated to the United States and became a Gospel singer.70 It is scarcely less than extraordinary that, from a body of graduates numbering only 316 between the last years of the nineteenth century and the outbreak of war in 1914, so many should have scaled professional heights far from their native land. The range of their achievements— science, diplomacy, education—attests to both the depth and breadth of their Anatolia education. It is no coincidence that these examples of outstanding accomplishments by Anatolia graduates are drawn from among those who left Turkey. Not only were opportunities for advanced study and professional achievement far greater abroad, but so many of those who remained in the land of their birth fell victims to sickness or the turmoil of the war years. One such figure was Misak Medzarents, who studied at Anatolia in the late 1890s and became famous for his two volumes of Armenian lyric poetry despite succumbing to tuberculosis at a young age.71 BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE During the years of Young Turk rule and mounting international challenges to the Empire, roughly 1908–1914, an air of uncertain expectancy infused the country. Many people hopefully anticipated a new era of reforms or even more radical political restructuring, while others, particularly among the Christian minorities, experienced a sense of foreboding and made plans to emigrate. American missionaries generally viewed events with optimism, foreseeing further gains for their cause. On the eve of World War I, the ABCFM could proudly point to a remarkable network of institutions throughout the Ottoman Empire: seventeen mission stations staffed by 175 missionaries who maintained nine hospitals and, directly or through their delegates, oversaw 426 schools with 25,000 pupils. Their optimistic outlook was reflected in the title of the work published in 1908 by James Barton, foreign secretary of the American Board, Daybreak in Turkey.72

128

Chapter 3

At Marsovan, Charles Tracy concentrated with single-minded determination upon a fixed goal—to leave behind a mighty institution that would continue its expansion as a Christian educational center offering intellectual and moral leadership to youth from an ever-widening region. The vast possibilities open to Anatolia became manifest with the institution’s rapid growth. Even as enrollment mounted, it could not meet the increasing demand from faraway lands. Year after year, applicants had to be turned away because of limited facilities. The College’s boarding capacity after a series of makeshift expansions was about three hundred; the Girls School could house approximately 125 boarders and serve as many more day students. Tracy, returning in 1905 from his last long furlough in the United States at age sixty-seven, resolved to raze that barrier and leave a campus equal to the new horizons seen to be opening for Anatolia. “It is the struggle of my life now, to get, before I give up this responsibility, the equipment in comfortable and sufficient buildings which we have toiled for so long.”73 The compound of about thirty-seven acres occupied by the American institutions in Marsovan had grown nearly fivefold in over half a century, but in an erratic fashion due to the many constraints faced by its missionary builders. The first and major limitation was always financial. Given the unpredictable availability of donations, the College would normally expend whatever funds came its way for its most urgent need. The resulting tendency toward improvisation was reinforced by problems in acquiring land and official permission to erect buildings. The College had to make the most of momentary opportunities occasioned by a generous benefactor, a landowner willing to sell adjacent property at a reasonable price, a relaxation of government strictures against new building by Christian institutions, or compliant local officials willing to look the other way. Amid those and other uncertainties, such as the shifting political climate and sharp fluctuations in an agrarian economy sensitive to crop failures, it was rarely possible to formulate long-term strategies for Anatolia’s physical growth. Enrollments rose and fell unpredictably with the price of wheat and political tensions. Finding the best solutions under such circumstances required an adaptive ingenuity. The Anatolia campus accordingly took shape through a long series of modifications as existing structures were inconspicuously expanded, renovated, and turned to new uses. By way of illustration, Tracy recorded that his family’s residence within the Anatolia precinct had changed no fewer than twenty-seven times. Though pleasing in aspect by virtue of their white plaster exteriors, red tile roofs, and general neatness, in contrast to the shabby clutter of the town, most campus buildings were considered unequal to their expanding requirements. Deficiencies were especially troubling in the library



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

129

and science laboratories. The exception to the general hodgepodge was the Girls School building (Fritcher Hall) with its South Hall annex.74 The political transformation in 1908, accompanied by relaxation of the regulations governing foreign schools, removed for a time one barrier to the improvement of Anatolia’s premises. Mission headquarters and the U.S. Embassy in Constantinople assisted in securing legal recognition of ABCFM’s ownership of its Marsovan property, most of which had been purchased in the name of individuals, and in obtaining new building permits based on the authority of Anatolia’s 1899 firman. Some greater inflow of funding from donors in the United States eased that constraint as well. Perceiving rare opportunities of uncertain duration, Tracy embarked on a quest to transform the Anatolia compound from a collection of agglutinated structures of indifferent quality into a campus worthy of comparison to Robert College in Constantinople or the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. Fourteen steamship lines now plied the Black Sea via Constantinople. The growth of the nearest port at Samsun and the anticipated completion of a railway line that was expected to reduce travel time from there to as little as two hours promised to end Marsovan’s remoteness. Serious consideration was given to opening a satellite high school somewhere on the Black Sea coast. With applications rising steadily, it seemed reasonable to expect that by 1920 the combined student body at Marsovan might reach one thousand. Tracy and his colleague and successor, George White, envisioned Anatolia producing the leadership that would transform the Black Sea basin and the uplands of Asia Minor into highly productive regions.75 The most striking feature of the redesigned campus envisioned by Tracy was replacement of its wooden and inferior brick structures by edifices of stone, cement, and improved brick. The older buildings had the advantage of having been erected with local materials and labor at very low cost, but experience had demonstrated how vulnerable such construction was to conflagrations. Destructive fires ravaged Marsovan periodically and Anatolia had lost one building by fire in 1893, in addition to other narrow escapes.76 Tracy brought all his practical ingenuity to the task. Leasing a quarry a mile from town, he began mining fine quality stone for a set of major buildings. Steel girders, the first to be seen in the province, were shipped from Belgium and hauled from the Samsun port by camels. Asbestos roof shingles came from Canada. An English architect, W. J. Childs, was engaged to prepare designs. Always unsure about financing, Tracy adopted the practice of starting buildings whenever he could secure a permit and with whatever resources were at hand, trusting that further means would be forthcoming. His goal was to reshape the campus by constructing two

130

Chapter 3

quadrangles, one for the College and one for the preparatory school, in addition to the new hospital building and a new seminary. The most imposing of the envisioned structures would bear the name Union Hall, symbolizing the congress of nationalities Anatolia aspired to be. President Tracy personally oversaw all aspects of construction.77 Beyond the physical dimensions, Tracy’s larger concept, first adumbrated to the American Board in 1910, was an expanded set of institutions more closely linked and all under the Anatolia rubric. Each of the associated units—College, Seminary, Girls School, Hospital, King School, and Academy (high school)—was to have its own internal management, but come under the authority of a coordinating council. This administrative formula was designed particularly to resolve financial issues. The council would represent all the associated institutions in fundraising and apportion the fruits fairly. The model Tracy cited was Oberlin College with its constituent seminary.78 This proposed organizational structure does not seem to have matured fully before Tracy’s departure in 1913, although the Girls School adopted the Anatolia name as early as 1911. His successor, George White, regularly cited “the Anatolia group of institutions” in school publications. The phrase’s interest lies largely in illuminating the grand design of Tracy and his colleagues at this time when Anatolia’s fortunes were soaring, but also in the light it casts on certain perceived drawbacks in Anatolia’s scheme of governance. Its Massachusetts charter invested highest authority in a Board of Trustees whose membership was identical to that of the Prudential Committee, the ABCFM’s executive organ. That formula had the merit of relieving the ABCFM itself of formal responsibility for the more secular college with its separate incorporation while keeping intact its effective control. By contrast, the Seminary and Girls School remained regular mission institutions under the authority of the American Board and its Western Turkey Mission. The objective served by this arrangement was to honor the Board’s obligation to its American constituents, mostly Congregational churches and their affiliates, to accord highest priority to its primary goal of evangelization. Accordingly, the Board had made it clear from the outset that its financial obligations to the College would be strictly limited to the promised annual grant of $1,200 and the salaries of the missionaries who administered and taught in the College in addition to their main mission duties. All other costs would have to be met through tuition and fees or donations. The Prudential Committee acting as trustees would manage and invest for Anatolia whatever resources accrued to it. However—and this was the essential point—the trustees would not engage in active solicitation on Anatolia’s behalf given their commitment to ABCFM’s own



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

131

financial requirements. Moreover, the Prudential Committee performed this same service for several other mission institutions.79 Although this organizational expedient enabled the ABCFM to sanction the College’s operation while subordinating it to the Board’s evangelical priorities, the device entailed a serious handicap for the institution. It meant that Anatolia’s trustees exercised a largely passive fiduciary role, leaving the College without an active agency for seeking funds in the United States. As a result, Charles Tracy had to assume virtually the full burden of raising financial support while also managing the increasingly complex school. He was hindered by the infrequency of his trips to America at approximately ten-year intervals for furloughs. England was more accessible for summer visits, and Tracy built up a circle of friends and supporters there, but his main base of support lay naturally in the United States He was forced to rely upon contacts made during his occasional trips home and an active correspondence during the long intervals. Tracy’s letters are remarkable for their cogency and ardor in conveying Anatolia’s needs. In seeking contributions he was further constrained by the Board’s restriction against making approaches to current ABCFM supporters.80 As opportunities for Anatolia’s expansion broadened, financial limitations preoccupied Tracy. Most of Anatolia’s operating expenses were met by tuition and boarding fees, ranging from about two-thirds to four-fifths, depending upon enrollment and tuition levels. The ABCFM’s fixed annual contribution covered about 10 percent of costs in the late 1890s, a share that declined, as the College budget grew, to under 3 percent a decade later. Interest from endowment and income from the Self-Help Department covered only part of the resulting shortfall, leaving to Tracy the task of finding donations to close the gap every year, expand the endowment, and obtain capital gifts for improving the campus. It was a matter of principle as well as necessity that no deficit should be allowed in the school’s accounts. Tracy’s greatest success was winning the support of Dr. and Mrs. D. K. Pearson, who made a series of major gifts to the College. Dr. Pearson wrote to the ABCFM in 1905 that he was prepared to make a donation of $50,000, an immense sum then for Anatolia, but wished to explain that he had accumulated that wealth “by sharp bargains and rigid economy.” If there was any doubt about its being “tainted” or unsuitable for extending Christian education in Turkey, he knew of many theological institutes and “poor colleges” that would be delighted to receive it. Anatolia embraced the gift, thereby boosting its endowment to $100,000. As gratifying as that result was, it paled before the goals Tracy contemplated in 1910: an endowment of $250,000 for Anatolia and $150,000 for its affiliated institutions, in addition to funds for reshaping the campus.81

132

Chapter 3

As the College evolved in more secular directions and was compelled to seek financial support beyond the circle of ABCFM contributors, its divergence from the American Board widened, as reflected in correspondence between Marsovan and Boston. Disagreements over financial matters became more common, and Tracy spoke of resigning more than once. However, his close bonds with the Board’s leaders, after decades of collaboration for the missionary cause, always prevailed. Moreover, the Prudential Committee was by no means indifferent to Anatolia’s needs. It was instrumental in securing a major grant of $25,000 for facilities from an anonymous New York donor in 1912. The dynamic ABCFM secretary, James L. Barton, who also served as an Anatolia trustee, accorded high priority to mission colleges and spearheaded a drive to create a major capital fund for their endowments and buildings. Even so, in his final years Tracy came to question the benefit to Anatolia of its governance structure. He wrote: “The colleges connected with the Board, weighted with restrictions and embarrassed every day with the pressure which success brings, are so roused as to contemplate declaration of independence. The Board can never hold these institutions in this way.” George White, upon assuming the presidency, pursued the argument further, contrasting Anatolia’s constrained circumstances to other mission institutions in the region, such as Euphrates and Central Turkey Colleges, which operated under independent Boards of Trustees. The governance issue remained to be resolved following the cataclysm of the war years.82 Rewards for many years of toil began to materialize at this time. A long friendship between Edward Riggs, who died in Turkey in 1913, and John Stuart Kennedy, a New York banker and railroad executive who was a major benefactor of Robert College and Smyrna’s International College, resulted in a bequest of $50,000 from the Kennedy estate. Mr. Kennedy’s widow subsequently donated $25,000 for new quarters for the Home, the residence for younger boys. These were immense sums by past standards at Marsovan, but the new challenges demanded no less. Tracy turned to the College’s students and alumni for assistance in financing a new building to house the growing library and museum collection. A bond of loyalty to Anatolia had developed among alumni, as expressed by the custom of the graduating class pledging a sum to be raised for the school. The Alumni Association, founded in 1891 during George Herrick’s short presidency, regularly assisted the College by contributing scholarships and prizes. It now led the successful effort to subscribe the equivalent of $4,000, an unprecedented sum from local donors, for the library and museum, to be named Alumni Hall.83 Dr. Jesse Marden, skilled surgeon and able organizer, while directing the Anatolia hospital, managed to meet most of its operational costs from fees while also securing about half the funds needed for the impressive



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

133

building that was begun in 1911. Gifts from Ella Towle and a legacy from Ann Marston in England accounted for most of the remainder.84 By the time of Tracy’s retirement in 1913, the following works were either ready, in progress, or scheduled for construction with financing largely in hand. North Hall, the first stone and iron structure, completed in 1911, provided the College with four classrooms, a dormitory, a gymnasium, a large common room, and two teachers’ rooms.85 Alumni Hall, of stone and brick, described as “probably the finest building in the whole province of Sivas,” opened in the fall of 1913. Its three stories and attic housed the College’s main administrative offices, the library serving the College and Seminary with adjoining reading rooms and bookstore, the museum, a small amphitheater, and a storage area.86 Ground was broken for the Kennedy Home in October 1913, just after Tracy’s departure. Completed in April 1915, together with the adjoining principal’s residence, the mostly brick building was intended to be the key structure in the second new quadrangle serving the boys preparatory division with residential and classroom facilities. It was connected with the main campus by a tunnel under the street.87 The “beautiful and commodious,” hospital at Anatolia was actually a complex of three buildings. The main structure, with a capacity of 130 beds, was completed in the summer of 1914 and named after its benefactress, Mrs. Towle. Adjoining it were the dispensary for outpatients that included a pharmacy, an apartment for the resident physician, and the kitchen and laundry operations.88 Union Hall, the largest building planned for the new College quadrangle, had its cornerstone laid June 1913. It was intended to house classrooms, the science department, a large study hall, and service areas, but was not completed due to the interruption of the war. A large part of its funding, contributed by Arthur Curtis James, was retained by the trustees for future use.89 A new Seminary building was intended to reinvigorate theological studies at Marsovan by providing quarters separate from the College, which over the years had encroached on the Seminary’s facilities as its enrollment dwindled. Friends from Iowa sent contributions as a memorial to President White’s father, George Hills White, formerly a missionary in Turkey. Although the means were in hand by 1910, continuing debate within the Western Turkey Mission over relocating the Seminary delayed beginning construction until the summer of 1914. With workmen soon called away to military service, construction was halted and the project was never finished.90 All these buildings were designed in a practical style with a view to economy, simplicity, and durability. Other additions during these later

134

Chapter 3

years included four houses for local faculty, a laundry, bakery, flour mill, electric generator, deep-water well, and a flushing pool that also served swimmers. An outstanding feature of the campus was its high standards of sanitation in an era when epidemics still raged; a wave of cholera in 1911 caused the Marsovan district to undergo compulsory quarantine and claimed about one thousand lives. Over the years, extensive gardens were planted, making the campus a place of serene beauty that drew visitors from near and far. Demetrios Theocharides, Anatolia alumnus (1888) and senior faculty member, had this to say about its renewal: “Every building on the campus of the College, their equipment, yea, every piece of stone and iron ready to serve his plans declare the persistent efforts and toils of President Tracy for the advancement of Anatolia.”91 In departing from Marsovan with his wife Myra in 1913 at age seventyfive, Charles Tracy left an educational edifice scarcely imaginable when they arrived forty-six years earlier. From the handful of students in the high school in 1881, Anatolia’s enrollment had grown a hundredfold. From a single makeshift building, an entire campus had risen, glorious to behold, its structures designed to last for decades. Legal recognition had been wrested from unwilling Ottoman authorities. Highly doubtful financial prospects had given way to a robust flow of income from fees, endowment, and gifts. The academic achievements of Anatolia’s seasoned faculty were evident in the acceptance of its graduates by the most illustrious universities for professional training. The complex of schools of which Anatolia was the center provided educational sustenance at every level, ranging from elementary to university, from vocational to highly academic. Its hospital and related services relieved the misery of thousands every year and elevated health standards throughout the region. In two important respects, the results proved very different from those originally intended. Anatolia did not fulfill the fundamental missionary objective of conversions to Protestantism; instead it adapted to the aspirations of the people it served for liberal and vocational education. Secondly, it remained under American ownership and leadership rather than sharing control or conferring proprietorship upon the local evangelical community. Nevertheless, Anatolia had won trust and confidence from beleaguered people who had little of either to give under Ottoman rule. It put hope in their lives by demonstrating that diverse groups could live, work, and study together harmoniously under an enlightened ethical code. Its hopeful influence radiated across a vast area of Asia Minor. That Charles and Myra Tracy, together with their Armenian, Greek, and American co-workers, scaled such heights despite poverty, disease, violence, and political upheaval makes their accomplishment nothing less than heroic.



Anatolia’s Flowering in Turkey (1896–1914)

135

Anatolia College’s twenty-eighth commencement exercises in June 1914 coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the Seminary and the Girls School. A weeklong series of events celebrated the jubilee. A tent covered a seating area for a thousand people as former graduates returned for the occasion. One full day was allotted to Anatolia and preparatory school orators declaiming in four languages. The annual Field Day saw five school records set for athletic prowess. At the Girls School ceremony, the oldest graduate, Prampion Gureghian of the class of 1869, who had remained to teach and administer in the school, recounted aspects of its history. The American Women’s Board of Missions was represented by a Miss Merrill of Des Moines, Iowa. An eminent British authority on Turkey, Sir Edwin Pears, gave the keynote address at the Anatolia commencement. Announcement was made of a major bequest for scholarships by Sarkis G. Telfeyan, an Armenian lately of New York. Among the fourteen graduates, a Greek and an Armenian took the top academic awards. The first and only Muslim to receive an Anatolia degree, Noureddin H. Pehliwanzade, ranked third and won first prize for his senior thesis.92 Nothing could more convincingly illustrate the achievement of the Marsovan educators in creating an international community amid a society rigidly divided by ethnic-religious barriers than these celebratory events. The ceremonies marked the zenith of this remarkable enterprise in Turkey. Six weeks later, the order for military mobilization was announced in the mosques of Marsovan. The educational roots that the Tracys, Herricks, Riggs, Smiths, and Whites planted in Ottoman soil were ultimately to bear fruit in another land.

4

} The Great War and Its Aftermath Tragedies and Transitions (1914–1923)

T

he new regime that seized control in 1908, deposing Sultan Abdul Hamid II the following year after an abortive countercoup, became distracted from its task of internal reform by incessant assaults upon the Ottoman Empire from disaffected subjects in its fringe provinces and aggressive Christian states with designs on its territory. In rapid succession, it lost Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria and Crete to Greece and saw Bulgaria assert full independence. Italy took advantage of the empire’s weakness to declare war in 1911 and seize Libya and the Dodecanese Islands. There ensued the two Balkan Wars (1912–1913), which effectively ended the Ottoman presence in Europe, except for a portion of Eastern Thrace. Muslim refugees from lost territories flooded the country, inflaming nationalist passions to match those of Turkey’s antagonists. The series of external crises kept the country in a constant state of belligerence, reinforcing centralization while weakening reformist currents within the revolutionary government. The Young Turk rulers, becoming increasingly authoritarian as they confronted threats from the Christian world, moved further along the continuum from a multiethnic society toward the Turkish-Muslim chauvinism begun under Abdul Hamid. They came to see the Christian millets as a threat to their envisioned Muslim polity. By 1913, the country was governed by a military junta under the growing influence of Germany. Though exhausted by war and with its economy in disarray, Turkey secretly contracted in August 1914 to side with Germany and Austria in the forthcoming war. When it entered the conflict that fall, its rulers declared a jihad, or Muslim holy war.1 137

138

Chapter 4

The prolonged crisis of more than a dozen years that saw Turkey’s defeat in the Great War and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, paradoxically, in its early years left Anatolia College relatively undisturbed. While martial law was declared in Constantinople in 1909 and dreadful massacres of Armenians took place at Adana in southern Turkey, Anatolia, behind its sheltering walls in distant Marsovan, pursued its goals for an expanding international college, buoyed by the rising demand for admission and the accomplishments of its students. If the school’s leaders seemed at times oblivious to the larger political forces soon to descend upon them, they were powerless in any event to influence those tectonic movements whose outcome few contemporary minds could foresee. The key figure guiding Anatolia’s fortunes during the ensuing years of hardship was President George White. In one sense his professional timing was unfortunate. With Charles Tracy having retired just as Anatolia reached its apex in Turkey, White officially assumed the school’s leadership at the 1914 commencement, only weeks before the outbreak of the European war. It fell to him to shepherd Anatolia through its most trying era. On the other hand, his long apprenticeship under the veteran mission team of Smith, Herrick, Tracy, and Riggs could not have been more fitting. After John Smith’s death in 1895, he assumed the duties of station treasurer. White developed a particular attachment to Tracy, sharing his mentor’s regard for education as the dynamic force for reshaping native culture. He became the growing College’s first dean in 1905, after three years of managing it during President Tracy’s long furlough. George White’s wide-ranging competencies were geared to advancing both the spiritual and material betterment of the people he had chosen to serve. Besides administering the College and preaching at religious services, as financial manager responsible for apportioning funds throughout the larger region, he gained an understanding of the local economy and its possibilities for development. His teaching ranged from theology to political economy. If, perhaps, he could not match the founder’s charismatic personality, White developed other qualities that gave his service exceptional value. Following the missionary practice at Marsovan of concentrating on one of the three vernacular tongues, White pursued Turkish to advanced fluency, enabling him to lecture and preach widely. Physically robust, he did his full share of traveling by horseback to outlying villages where Turkish was commonly spoken, even by Christians. He frequently visited mosques and cordially exchanged views with Muslim clerics. White’s mastery of Turkish led to a deepening interest in Near Eastern religions, folklore, and archeology, prompting him to take a half-year sabbatical leave at Mansfield College, Oxford University, in 1907 and to



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

139

hold a fellowship in comparative religion at Chicago Theological Seminary during his furlough in 1909–1910. He lectured and wrote about the Hittites and other early inhabitants of Turkey and the heterodox religious movements resulting from the amalgamation of cultures and beliefs. These findings inspired a sympathetic understanding of the linkages among the peoples dwelling in Asia Minor and a compassionate attitude toward the Turkish villager. White’s close acquaintance with Turkish culture and Muslim religion was exceptional not only among the Americans in Marsovan, who normally concentrated their efforts on acquiring either Armenian or Greek, but among missionaries throughout Turkey. He wrote that “after all humanity is essentially one,” and once stated that he had never asked anyone to change his religion. Declaring himself a Turkophile, he lauded the Muslim virtues of hospitality, courtesy, goodwill, and sense of right and wrong. At the same time he found fundamental flaws in the moral structure of Islam. After the atrocities of 1915, his view of the Turkish character darkened as he came to doubt the capability of the Turks to govern other races or possibly even themselves. As Anatolia’s sole senior male missionary educator throughout the troubled decade (1914–1924), White exercised a major influence over its fortunes.2 The tumultuous events that engulfed Anatolia College and finally ended its work in Turkey may be best viewed in four segments: (a) from the onset of World War I in the summer of 1914 to the College’s first closing in the spring of 1916; (b) the interval until its reopening during which a small missionary group remained in Marsovan (1916– 1919); (c) the postwar resumption of classes until terminated by the new nationalist government (1919–1921); and, (d) the years 1921–1924 when final efforts to resume in Marsovan gave way to a tentative plan to relocate in Greece. THE EARLY WAR YEARS AND ANATOLIA’S FIRST CLOSING 1914–1916 In the spring of 1914, White observed the determination of the country’s leadership to elevate the Muslim populace at the expense of Christian elements. He feared a movement toward “an anti-Christian crusade.” Rumors of impending war and the stationing of three military regiments at Marsovan heightened anxieties at Anatolia. An altercation between Turkish soldiers and College workmen and students developed into a confrontation with the local military commander that abated only after the intervention of Ambassador Henry Morgenthau with the Ottoman Minister of War.3 As war preparations escalated that summer, the Turkish commander requisitioned the nearly completed hospital building as a temporary

140

Chapter 4

barracks for sixteen hundred troops, apparently in retaliation for the earlier confrontation. After only a few weeks, the troops withdrew from Marsovan and relocated eastward. The declaration of martial law, conscription of young men, commandeering of goods, and shortages of supplies and currency due to hoarding caused the college staff to doubt whether it could reopen in the fall. When it did succeed in convening in September, eight faculty members, several other employees, and a large number of students had been called away for military service. The school year began with fewer than half the previous enrollment. The greatest attrition was among Greeks and Russians, who had to travel the furthest to reach Marsovan. The reduced faculty of twenty members had to accept lower wages. Girls School enrollment held fairly steady, but the Seminary closed and was not to reopen in Marsovan. The hospital began operation in its new building upon the departure of Turkish troops, despite the loss of two Armenian physicians to military service and the inability of most patients to pay for treatment. George White wrote that the late summer and early fall of 1914 was the hardest time known in Turkey in eighteen years. Little did he know that far harder times were soon to come.4 That fall, the Ottoman Empire took the fateful step of entering the war as an ally of Germany. It had already announced the abrogation of the long-standing Capitulations granting foreign residents exemptions from Ottoman law. Though legitimized by long observance and reinforced by international treaties, they represented a compromise of sovereignty such as no Western state would have accepted, symbolizing for Turkey’s rulers the abusive intrusions of the Christian West. But for the American missions they represented assurance that their institutions and personnel would be protected against arbitrary or hostile treatment. In fact, Protestant missionaries had long enjoyed a degree of freedom in Turkey—to acquire property, operate schools, and engage in proselytizing—that was denied them in Roman Catholic countries or in neighboring Greece. Now they were to become fully subject to domestic law and receive the same treatment as Ottoman subjects by the police, courts, and prisons.5 The repudiation of long-established privileges was followed by strict new regulations governing the operation of foreign and minority schools. They required the equivalent use of Turkish with other languages, banned compulsory religious services for non-Christians, imposed new taxes, and mandated official school inspection and approval of textbooks. Such controls were directed mainly against the numerous Greek Orthodox and Armenian schools. Intervention by the U.S. Embassy succeeded in delaying their application to American institutions until the beginning of the 1915–1916 school year; even then they were administered with leniency. Meanwhile, Anatolia reluctantly suspended the obligation to at-



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

141

tend religious services for its seven Muslim students. The French Catholic schools in Marsovan had already closed and their personnel departed.6 A sense of isolation enveloped the Anatolia community after Turkey’s entry into the war, as steamer traffic to the country’s Black Sea ports ceased. Constantinople became accessible only by the long and hazardous overland route. Mails were unreliable and official censors allowed only the blandest messages to pass. Military conscription took away most of Marsovan’s Muslim men, whereas Armenians and Greeks, whether from fear of harsh treatment in Turkish army units or for other reasons, largely escaped duty by paying an exemption tax. The resulting ethnic imbalance among young males alarmed local authorities at a time of rising tensions heightened by Ottoman military reverses on the Russian front, desertions from the army, and government requisitions of supplies and equipment from Armenian shops and homes. On the other hand, Marsovan was fortunate in being distant from the fields of battle and largely free of military presence at this time. The hospital began cooperation with the American Red Cross under an agreement with the Ottoman government to treat Turkish casualties. Anatolia teachers and older students subject to conscription were usually able to gain exemption through paying the designated fee. The College was spared serious disruption, and in June 1915 nine seniors received diplomas, joined by eleven graduates of the Girls School and four nurses from the hospital’s training program. However, the usual public ceremony had to be dispensed with because of worsening political circumstances. That summer, students whose home venues presented problems of travel or safety were allowed to remain on campus for study during the normal vacation period.7 During this troubled time, the challenge mounted earlier by Turkey’s Armenian leadership to the military-controlled government reached a momentous climax. Disappointed by the meager results of efforts to improve the civil rights and security of its people through conventional political processes, the Armenian National Assembly (the executive organ of the Gregorian millet) had petitioned the European powers in 1912 to finally make good on the promises of the Treaty of Berlin by mandating new reforms in the six eastern provinces where about half of Turkey’s Armenians resided. The government of Tsar Nicholas II championed these measures with the aim of extending its influence into that region. Despite reservations among the other powers, the Ottoman government was compelled in early 1914 to accept a modified version of the plan providing for a degree of autonomy under European inspectors. For the Ottoman leaders, this new imposition can only have evoked memories of Russia’s earlier interference on behalf of the Bulgarians that had also

142

Chapter 4

begun with limited autonomy but soon led to full independence and subsequent hostilities against Turkey. Moreover, the six provinces where the Armenians were concentrated (though comprising a minority of the population there) bordered on Russia’s Armenian-populated Transcaucasian districts wrested from the Ottomans in 1878. It looked very much like a new scheme to seize territory from the empire, this time in its very heartland of Anatolia, which included Marsovan. A situation arose similar to that of 1895 when halfhearted measures by the Christian powers to impose reforms in the same region had precipitated widespread massacres. The trials the Armenian people had endured at that time were to pale in comparison to the consequences of this ill-advised intervention twenty years later. The onset of war forestalled actual implementation of the plan while presenting Turkey’s military government with the opportunity to prevent such intrusion from ever occurring again.8 Marsovan was only one among hundreds of towns and villages throughout the Ottoman domains that from the spring of 1915 were to fall victim to one of the foulest crimes against humanity in modern times. The massacres and deportations of mostly defenseless Armenians engineered by Ottoman officials resulted in the destruction of a large portion of that population and the uprooting of its surviving remnants from their ancestral homes in Asia Minor. The historical debate that continues to this day over the precise causes and responsibility for the atrocities of 1915–1916 falls beyond the compass of the present study. Whether the intent was to eliminate most of the Armenian population of Asia Minor, or only to enhance security by removing Armenians from their towns and villages to the inhospitable mountains and deserts under wartime conditions, the results in either case could only be the same. Some explanation for those barbarous deeds may be found in the humiliating setbacks that Turkey had suffered at the hands of aggressive Christian states; the hostility felt by many Muslims toward their Christian neighbors as traitorous accomplices of the empire’s foes; their frustration with poverty, corrupt and oppressive rule, and the better fortunes of their Christian compatriots; the government’s concern to secure prospective war zones against approaching Russian forces; reaction against Armenian units serving in the Tsar’s advancing army; and instances of sedition and even small-scale armed rebellion by Ottoman Armenians. But beyond rational explanation is the deep contempt for infidels manifested by many Turks, a malevolence that allowed no compunctions against doing them mortal harm. Once government officials initiated measures to drive out the despised minority and invited its victimization, ancient hatreds, ingrained arrogance, cupidity, lust, and mob instincts stoked the fires of violence against those demonized and defenseless



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

143

people. Christian Europe had demonstrated only too convincingly that the nation-state based upon real or imagined ethnic and religious homogeneity was the new world force. The Turks now applied that principle in their own way by seeking to expunge an alien element that incited foreign interference. Their behavior toward the Armenians set a new standard for barbarity in the modern era.9 Conditions of war and Ottoman censorship prevented the outside world from discerning for several months the wholesale butchery taking place throughout much of Turkey. The cosmopolitan centers of Constantinople and Smyrna on Turkey’s western fringe, with their concentrations of foreign diplomats and merchants, were largely spared the carnage, though not entirely. To arouse public awareness, Viscount David Bryce commissioned the as yet unheralded young historian, Arnold Toynbee, to compile and publish as a British government “Blue Book” a collection of 150 eyewitness accounts, mostly by foreign nationals residing throughout Turkey, many of them American missionaries. The influential Bryce was an Oxford professor of law and an authority on Turkey and Armenia who had served as British ambassador to the United States from 1907 to 1913. Much of the information was provided by James L. Barton, secretary of the ABCFM and also of the ad hoc Committee on Armenian Atrocities formed in October 1915. Barton enjoyed close contacts in Washington, D.C., and exceptional access to U.S. consular reports. To protect its sources, some of whom remained in Turkey, the original publication in 1916 did not divulge the names of witnesses, though they were disclosed later. For one district alone, the place names were also disguised because of the abundant personal detail and particular concern for the witnesses’ safety. That district, designated “Town X,” was Marsovan. Its fate was typical of innumerable Armenian communities throughout Asia Minor, including many with larger populations. Six of the nine accounts came from members of Anatolia’s staff, most of them relayed by Barton’s committee. They were George White (no. 86), Theodore A. Elmer (no. 87), Frances Gage (nos. 88, 89) and Ioannes P. Xenides (nos. 92, 93). Another report came from U.S. Consular Agent William Peter, based at Samsun, who visited Marsovan at this time (no. 90). Despite some discrepancies in detail, these accounts provide a generally consistent and persuasive portrayal of what occurred in that city. Their accuracy is confirmed by the daily diary entries by Bertha Morley, a teacher in the Girls School. These several accounts relate the following series of events.10 About the first of May, government officials arrested over twenty men prominent in Armenian political movements, supposedly legal since the 1908 revolution, including an Anatolia professor, K. M. Ozanian. They were imprisoned at Sivas where those who did not succumb to typhus were killed. Authorities also demanded the surrender of privately held

144

Chapter 4

weapons, legally permissible under the 1908 reforms. They launched searches for undeclared arms, employing torture to elicit information from two Anatolia workmen, among others. Invoking a new law allowing the compulsory transfer of whole communities during wartime emergencies, the police in late June seized all the Armenian men they could find, estimated at over twelve hundred, and marched them to remote locations for execution. Armenian property was confiscated by the state. Local officials enriched themselves by extorting money and valuables from doomed individuals, while Turks who tried to protect Armenian friends were punished. Anatolia assisted its Armenian male personnel to gain a temporary exemption by meeting the demands of senior officials for bribes. But a week later, all Armenian women and children, together with any remaining men, were ordered to be deported across the mountains to southern Turkey. Following further intervention with officials, the College secured a temporary reprieve for staff and their families and for some female day students, who took shelter in the college compound. Many other friends had to be refused. Some contrived to escape through conversion to Islam, bribery, or concealment. The great majority of Marsovan’s approximately thirteen thousand Armenians were taken off and never seen again. Anxious for the fate of those granted only provisional refuge within the campus walls but prevented by officials from wiring the American Embassy, President White dispatched a Greek tutor, Callisthenes Hurmuziades, by hazardous overland travel to the capital. He was followed in mid-July by Carl Compton, graduate of Grinnell College, who had arrived in 1913 to teach English. Duly informed, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau obtained assurances from the Ministers of War and Interior that the Armenians sheltered at Anatolia would not be harmed.11 The promises made to the ambassador proved worthless. The dispatch of U.S. Consular Agent William Peter to Marsovan to reinforce Morgenthau’s attempted intervention was also to no avail. On August 10, a police force arrived at the College’s gates demanding that the Armenians harbored there be surrendered. George White refused to open the gates and sent the hospital director, Jesse Marden, to appeal to the local governor. The result was a larger body of gendarmes who forced their way into the campus and seized by arms Armenian personnel together with their families. The group of about seventy-two was led away in oxcarts, the men to be executed, the women and children mostly to perish amid unspeakable trials. Victims among the faculty included Hovhannes Hagopian, professor of Turkish language and literature; Arakel G. Sivaslian, professor of mathematics and astronomy; and Garabed K. Kojayan, instructor of Turkish, as well as the superintendent of the Self-Help Department, N. L. Nerso, and assistant librarian Sarkis Gureghian. Other male members



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

145

of the college staff and several summer students were among those taken at this time. Theodore Elmer described the departure of his Armenian colleagues: I have received the farewell kiss and parting embrace of men, cultured Christian gentlemen, some of whom held university degrees from our best American institutions in this country, men with whom I have cooperated and at whose side I have laboured for ten years in the work of education in that land, while at their side stood brutal gendarmes, sent there by the highest authorities of the Government to drive them away with their wives and children from their homes, from their work, and from all the associations which they held most dear, into exile or to death, and some of them to a condition worse than either.12

The police on that occasion overlooked students from the Girls School who had remained for summer instruction and were hidden by the staff. They returned, however, two days later to demand their surrender. Fourteen covered wagons took away sixty-two young Armenian women, half of them students, the others teachers (six), nurses who had been attending wounded Turkish soldiers in the hospital (seven), workers with their children, and the leadership of the Marsovan YWCA. Girls School principal Charlotte Willard had planned for this eventuality by preparing clothing and supplies and by assigning a teacher or older girl to every wagon. The only Armenians allowed to remain were two elderly teachers, four nurses to sustain the hospital, a handful of deaf children, and two assistants to care for them. There ensued one of the most heroic episodes of the otherwise dark drama that engulfed that unhappy land. As the wagons disappeared on the eastern horizon, George White and Frances Gage persuaded the military commander to allow Gage and Charlotte Willard, who had made preparations, to follow them at a distance by horseback. Gage, formerly principal of the Girls School in the 1890s, had returned to Turkey as secretary of the International YWCA, making Marsovan her base, where she also oversaw the King School for the Deaf. The girls were lodged that first night just outside the district center of Amasia. Willard and Gage reached them the following morning, bringing food and money, but were prohibited from accompanying them further. Obliged to return to Marsovan, after a few days the two women set out again for Amasia. Every day was precious as the girls were moved into distant and unfamiliar regions. Despite refusals by the Amasia town council, Willard and Gage persuaded the regional governor to issue them permits for travel to the provincial capital of Sivas where the convoy was being taken. Passing long lines of hapless Armenian exiles along the way, they finally reached the wagon train before it entered Sivas. One of the group, Shnorhig Klydjian,

146

Chapter 4

recorded the girls’ exhilaration at seeing the approaching wagons bearing their rescuers. The teachers were able to arrange for the girls to be taken to the American missionary school in Sivas. The most daunting challenge remained—to secure their students’ release. As Bertha Morley, awaiting their return in Marsovan, later wrote: “It was like asking graves to open and give back the dead, to attempt that summer to rescue any who had been once seized and sent out on sefkiyat (deportation).” Overcoming a host of obstacles, Willard and Gage succeeded in extracting written permission from the Vali (provincial governor) to return their charges to Marsovan. Contrary to all expectations, they miraculously escorted forty-eight girls back to the Anatolia campus after an ordeal of twenty-five days. The remaining thirteen were mostly domestic staff and older women, including the trained nurse Lusaper Dorikian, whom the guards had separated earlier from the group. They were taken to a different destination and apparently all were lost. One girl succumbed to threats and importunities along the way to accept Islam and marriage to a Turkish officer.13 This was one of the few recorded instances of an authorized breach in the unrelenting Turkish campaign to disperse and annihilate the Armenians of Asia Minor. It is unclear whether the U.S. Embassy may have succeeded in influencing that remarkable liberation or whether it involved monetary payments. Certainly it could not have occurred without the courage and resourcefulness of Willard and Gage.14 The question now arose of whether to reopen the schools after the disaster of that summer. By one estimate, 11,500 of Marsovan’s 13,000 Armenians had been deported or killed, the remainder mostly having accepted Islam. Only fifty members remained of Marsovan’s Protestant community that formerly numbered 950. Other towns and villages in the hinterland reported comparable losses. All of Anatolia’s Armenian students were gone as well as the eleven Armenians from its faculty. The American staff had been reduced by the summer departure of several members, including Theodore Elmer with his wife, Henrietta, and Carl Compton, who ran afoul of officials in Constantinople and was obliged to leave Turkey. Professor of history and philosophy Ioannes P. Xenidis succeeded in fleeing with his family to the United States. Those who remained were exhausted and nerve-racked. The mission treasurer in Constantinople, William Peet, whose energy and competence enabled him to function in effect as coordinator of the several stations, doubted whether any of the schools outside Constantinople and Smyrna could continue to operate. He observed that the Marsovan institutions seemed to encounter greater ill will from the authorities than schools elsewhere. The esteemed U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau advised closing the Marsovan station.15



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

147

The return of the female students tipped the balance in favor of resuming classes. Otherwise the girls would have had to leave for their homes, with the likelihood of again being deported. The school compound was their best refuge, though an uncertain one. It offered a more secure haven as well for Greek children whose families feared for their well-being as the war took ominous turns. The station team set aside its earlier reservations in deciding only one day after the girls’ return to commence the Anatolia school year the very next day, September 8, and the Girls School two weeks later.16 Classes began that troubled term with fewer than a score of students, but in the succeeding months the number rose to sixty-five. The great majority were Greeks, in addition to eight Turkish and seven Russian boys. Since those reaching the age of eighteen were subject to conscription, all three members of the senior class and ten other students left in midyear. Most of the teaching duties fell to the three male missionaries, White, Getchell, and Pye, joined by two Greek colleagues. There was no thought of bringing new teachers from abroad, given the dangers of travel and general uncertainty. Mrs. Susan Riggs Getchell, Mrs. Etta Dickinson Pye, and Dr. Marden volunteered their services to reinforce the teaching staff. Some classes were combined and certain courses omitted, while older students were enlisted to teach beginning classes. The Girls School employed similar devices for a comparable number of students.17 As war raged to the east, with Ottoman troops suffering heavy casualties from invading Russian armies, and to the west, where British forces led an invasion of the Dardanelles Strait at Gallipoli, the small contingent of educators at Marsovan endeavored to provide protection and, as much as possible, normal student life to a reduced clientele. The return of the girls from Sivas, a rare exception to the uniform expulsion of Armenian Christians, and their continuing residence behind Anatolia’s walls, vexed Ottoman officials. Department of Education authorities objected to Muslim students having to attend Bible lessons and religious services, obliging the school again to relax those rules. Imported items such as sugar and oil for cooking and lighting became scarce. The Anatolia community drew closer together and interacted less with Turkish society. Contacts with the outside world became rare as roads proved unsafe, mails operated erratically, and censorship was even heavier than before. Whereas George White was normally a vigorous correspondent, managing relations with the Board in Boston by frequent letters, during the nine months from October 1915 to July 1916, he dispatched only seven letters to Board Secretary Barton. These were brief and said little, but still drew the censor’s heavy smudge. White later described the “blanket of silence and immobility the officials shut down over the whole country,” likening the situation to a state of siege.18

148

Chapter 4

Despite these difficulties, the small mission colony persisted. The King School ministered to nine deaf students in the former medical quarters vacated and refurbished when the new hospital was built. The Greek elementary school in Marsovan having closed, the YMCA undertook to replace it, employing older Anatolia students as teachers for up to fortyeight boys using college facilities. The hospital had fewer regular patients but treated about five hundred Ottoman soldiers suffering more from illnesses than war wounds, with financial support from the Red Cross. Dr. Marden, a pillar of strength, was now the sole physician as well as director, assisted only by his wife, Lucy Morley Marden, and two foreign nurses, Alice Tupper from Canada and Emma Zbinden from Switzerland. During these uncertain months, the Girls School bore the heavy responsibility of safeguarding its surviving Armenian students, whose fate was always in doubt. Nonetheless, Charlotte Willard and Bertha Morley succeeded in sustaining contacts with Muslim families and in drawing Turkish women to visit the campus. With finances strained, economies were accomplished in all divisions by closing unneeded buildings, using volunteer services, and extending employment to recent graduates and older students.19 That spring of 1916, the situation on Turkey’s eastern front deteriorated as Russian forces approached the towns of Erzerum and Trebizond. In response, Ottoman authorities promulgated a wider war zone and the expulsion of foreigners deemed unfriendly. Officials in Marsovan lost no time in putting this policy into effect. On May 10, 1916, the Kaimakan (local governor), the local military commander, and the chief of police appeared at the College with a force of gendarmes to secure the premises. They informed President White that the campus, with its furnishings and equipment, was requisitioned for a military hospital. All foreigners must leave promptly. The schools would be closed and students sent to their homes. Efforts by White and Marden to alert the U.S. Embassy so as to delay or modify the takeover were blocked. They were denied time to secure or even register school and personal property, but refrained from protesting more strenuously for fear of retaliation against their native colleagues. On May 16, the commandant of gendarmes dispatched eight wagons to transport all the Americans and other foreign staff to Constantinople under armed guard. In his account of these events, George White characterized the behavior of the local officials as excessively abrupt and severe. He thought the Kaimakan and gendarmes commandant went beyond the requirements of military necessity and suggested avarice as their motive for seizing Anatolia’s property. It does seem as if a particular animus may have developed toward Anatolia on the part of Marsovan officials, possibly due to lingering resentment over the clash between the College and the



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

149

authorities two years earlier. The U.S. Embassy lodged a protest with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, based mainly on White’s version of events, and received a reply partially acknowledging that local officials might have acted hastily. On the other hand, similar measures were carried out at this time against American schools in Sivas, Caesaria, and other provincial locations.20 Fifty-three years after the establishment of the missionary station and thirty years after Anatolia College’s founding, American activities in Marsovan came to a halt. However, it was to prove but an interruption. The men and women who had pledged their lives to aiding the people of this region, creating an institution whose human and physical dimensions were a marvel to all who beheld it, were not about to abandon that cause. THE WAR INTERLUDE: 1916–1919 In Constantinople the group expelled from Marsovan considered its next steps. George White, severely fatigued and separated from his wife who had left the previous summer, saw little prospect of accomplishing anything substantial for the Marsovan institutions by remaining in Turkey under prevailing conditions. After seeing off the Pye family of five, Dr. Marden with his wife and son, and Bertha Morley, he followed them to America in June.21 Those few who remained—Charlotte Willard, Dana and Susan Getchell, and Emma Zbinden—were determined to return to Marsovan, whatever the hazards. They petitioned the Ottoman government for permission, assisted by Mission Treasurer Peet and the U.S. Embassy. Frances Gage, who had spent most of the previous year in Constantinople on YWCA duties, planned to join them and was able to exercise some influence with Ottoman officials. Their main reason for returning was to protect the girls rescued from Sivas. Efforts by Gage and the American Board to transport them to the United States had not produced positive results. Before leaving Marsovan, Willard had managed to lodge them with relatives and friends, but their safety remained precarious. Another concern was the handful of children at the King School who they feared would be dispatched to some poorly maintained orphanage. They also hoped to resume somehow their efforts in education and philanthropy among the reduced Christian community, now mostly Greek, but to the extent possible with Muslims as well. Concern over the treatment of the valuable Anatolia campus by its military occupiers and its anticipated recovery after the war also figured in their thinking. Their resolve to return during wartime to a town whose authorities had shown dislike for the foreign educators and would be angered by being overruled by Constantinople

150

Chapter 4

demonstrated extreme bravery. Permission was obtained and the party of five arrived in Marsovan the end of July. At most of the other missionary stations, skeletal staffs also carried on, composed largely of women whom Ottoman officials apparently found less objectionable than foreign men.22 The guiding figure of this small band of humanitarians was Charlotte Willard, Girls School principal for the prior seventeen years. She had left a promising career at Carleton College to toil for the people of Turkey. Her fluency in Turkish enabled her to cultivate relations with Marsovan women but also to negotiate effectively with public officials, all, of course, male. A superb organizer, she oversaw the expansion of the Girls School before the war, established the King School, and was the sole woman on the managing board of the hospital. Strong in her faith, she frequently led prayer meetings, particularly in times of strife or danger. With her broad vision and planning skills, Willard had evinced uncommon spiritual and confrontational force during the crisis in the summer of 1915. Her colleague Bertha Morley wrote at that time, “She radiates strength and confidence and courage.” Her close associate, Emma Zbinden, affirmed that she led through her power of making everyone she touched want to do his or her best. Her feat of recovering the deported girls showed that for tenacity, judgment, and diplomacy, Charlotte Willard had few peers. It is in recognition of her extraordinary qualities that there stands today a Willard Hall on the Anatolia campus in Thessaloniki.23 Upon their return, the small group found circumstances changed remarkably, the campus transformed into a vast military hospital with nearly three thousand ailing soldiers crowded into its buildings. The order permitting their return authorized the party of five to repossess their former campus residences. Difficulties soon arose with military officers who resented their presence, but more serious obstacles appeared. Overcrowding and inadequate sanitation caused the outbreak of diseases that grew worse and spread to the civilian population as winter progressed. Three of their former dwellings were now used for the worst diseases and were badly contaminated. The missionary party contrived to find quarters on the campus or in nearby homes where they might isolate themselves from the rampant sickness.24 The immediate objective after finding acceptable lodgings was to verify the safety of the female students who had been out of touch for over two months. To their great relief, they discovered the girls had remained in seclusion and evaded the dreaded deportation. Initially they rounded up about thirty, and by October were able to reopen the Girls School with forty-eight students in a building belonging to the Protestant community adjoining the mission compound. The few remaining children from the King School joined them there. Most of the Armenian girls had lost their families and remained in danger. Working closely with William Peet in



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

151

Constantinople, Willard and Gage succeeded in transferring many of them to the more secure capital. Those who remained in Marsovan now embraced the new tasks assigned them by the missionaries. Their goal was to assuage suffering on all sides. The greatest need was among Turkish soldiers who were dying at the rate of up to forty a day from typhus, smallpox, cholera, dysentery, and other diseases. After a half day of lessons, students undertook to sew clothing for the bedridden. They succeeded in making or mending over ten thousand garments. Emma Zbinden trained some of the older girls to take up nursing duties in the hospital.25 Outside the college compound, distress bred by the war was everywhere evident. The region’s economy had virtually collapsed, and many people were without means. Some thousands of hapless Muslim refugees from Georgia and other areas taken by Russian troops jammed the town, occupying homes vacated by Armenians. At about this same time, the Turkish military began expelling Greek communities from their towns and villages on the Black Sea coast to the mountainous interior. Part of this new wave of forlorn souls sought refuge in Marsovan.26 The small missionary group responded by organizing a weaving and sewing industry in cooperation with local merchants. The driving force behind this “industrial work” was Frances Gage. Her career had been very different from her Marsovan colleagues. One of the early female tutors assigned to the Girls School in 1893, she was made its principal the following year. After losing her friend and Carleton College classmate, Martha King, and enduring the crisis years in Marsovan (1893–1895), Gage was compelled by poor health to withdraw from missionary service. But the bond she had established with Marsovan and especially with her former Carleton instructor, Charlotte Willard, endured. After many years of successful work with the YWCA, Gage returned to Turkey in 1913 as its representative with the purpose of linking local YWCA groups into a national organization. She spent much of her time in Marsovan managing the King School and assisting with the Girls School. Before the American schools there closed in 1916, she had organized a small enterprise for weaving imported cotton thread into gingham cloth that provided work for females. She now revived and expanded that operation to employ as many as four hundred women and children in combing, spinning, dyeing, and embroidering clothing, curtains, and covers. At the same time, she began a kindergarten, which was quickly over-enrolled and expanded to a primary school.27 Dana Getchell managed the group’s meager finances and endeavored to attend to sanitary measures and the upkeep of college property. To provide foodstuffs, he converted Grinnell Field to a vegetable garden. Through their good works, the missionaries gradually won a degree of

152

Chapter 4

cooperation from the authorities. Unable to cope with the mounting numbers of sickly children in the state orphanage, the army came to rely upon Willard and her associates to provide a nutritious daily meal and knitted clothing for up to eighteen hundred orphans. The military allowed them to take responsibility for the housing, feeding, and education of Christian orphans, beginning with a group of sixty that grew steadily. Most of them came bearing diseases such as scabies, favus, and trachoma. Every effort was made to establish their identity and, whenever possible, place them with surviving relatives.28 To support the philanthropic efforts by the missionaries still remaining in Turkey, individuals from the American Board joined with other American agencies in late 1915 to organize the Armenian Relief Committee. ABCFM treasurer William Peet in Constantinople endeavored to channel funds from America to aid “industrial work,” orphanages, and soup kitchens for refugees and war victims in interior towns. Marsovan posed a particular challenge in this respect because of its smallness and remote location. It had no bank, and most of its larger merchants who might handle remittances had been killed or impoverished. Communications became even more difficult after the United States entered the war in April 1917 and severed diplomatic relations with Turkey, although war was never declared between the two countries. American missionaries, numbering thirty-six at the nine remaining stations in Turkey, were now nationals of an unfriendly country. U.S. consular officials, who had always been a source of information and support, were withdrawn, leaving the missionaries largely to their own devices in facing unsympathetic officials under a state of war.29 The Marsovan group met these difficulties with optimism and a willingness to be of service that could not help but neutralize to some extent the suspicions of military officers. More formidable were the contagious diseases spawned by the congested hospital. The missionaries took every precaution for themselves and their charges, but after a year’s toil in unhealthy and stressful conditions, they lost one of their most valued members. Frances Gage succumbed, probably to typhus, in July 1917. Charlotte Willard buried the second of her Carleton students and her closest companion during their most trying times in Turkey. Gage’s strong and resourceful personality had won respect among the Turkish people, for whom she nourished a particular affection. Her compassionate sentiments were perhaps best expressed following the violence against the Armenians in 1915: Whatever may be said about the revolutionary intentions of the Armenian people, a rebellious nation is not executed by its Government, but is fought in a fair fight, and those of us who have loved the Turks and believed that



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

153

they would, in the end, work out a government that could be respected, grieve almost more over this great failure of theirs than over the suffering of their unfortunate subjects.30

William Peet, relocated in Berne, Switzerland, doubted whether the Marsovan team could carry on after losing Frances Gage, whom he described as “the life of that enterprise.” Shortly after her death, Emma Zbinden became seriously ill with dysentery. But the group persevered throughout the war. Much of that time they were virtually out of touch with the rest of the world. Willard received no word from her mother for two years. It is impossible to know the number of lives they saved among the sick and wounded in war-wracked Turkey.31 From the moment George White arrived in the United States, his constant preoccupation was to return to Turkey and restore Anatolia. He and Esther had made Marsovan their home for twenty-six years and raised their family there. Even after two and a half years of active speaking and writing on behalf of relief efforts for the Near East, White cited his “enforced detention” in America far from his “adopted country,” and his eagerness to return “to my own place and work, my home and people in Turkey.”32 During his first months in America, White remained mostly in Boston and New York, where he was able to inform the American Board about conditions in Turkey and confer with the trustees about new beginnings when the college reopened. The Board’s senior secretary, James Barton, had taken the lead in initiating American relief operations for the Near East after Ambassador Morgenthau signaled the grave plight of the Armenians in September 1915. Barton was backed by Cleveland Dodge, a wealthy and influential philanthropist who for many years helped steer the efforts on behalf of Armenians. As the full magnitude of the human disaster became apparent, the original Armenian Relief Committee in 1919 became incorporated nationally with a Congressional charter under the title “Near East Relief” (NER). Through unprecedented organizational effectiveness for a private charity, it succeeded over the next several years in mobilizing public opinion and funneling tens of millions of dollars to assist refugees, orphans, and other destitute people. NER chairman Barton naturally turned to repatriated missionaries, knowledgeable about the Near East and available to staff an array of offices across the country, publicize the disaster, and organize appeals for support. He enlisted George White in this campaign, appointing him as director for Minnesota, where Esther had relocated with their children. Over the next two years, White was instrumental in raising significant funds for the relief campaign. The friends and contacts he made in the Midwest at this time would become a valuable base for later fundraising

154

Chapter 4

for Anatolia. While pursuing these duties, White stayed in close touch with Anatolia personnel in the United States and planned the College’s reopening. It was at this time also that he completed and had published the biography of his mentor, Charles Tracy, who died in 1917.33 White envisioned a restored Anatolia resuming its remarkable prewar expansion. He shared Tracy’s concept of an international institution integrating ethnic and religious groups drawn from a region stretching from central Asia Minor to the northern shores of the Black Sea and from the Balkans to the Caucasus. This multinational college would embrace four major peoples. First were the Armenians, “to whom Anatolia owes a sacred and solemn duty” by virtue of their great suffering. White’s hope was that Anatolia could help to train Armenian leaders for eventual autonomy comparable to Robert College’s much-heralded service to the Bulgarians. Second were Greeks, composing the largest element of the student body when Anatolia was at its peak, and now the major Christian component in the region. Third, the enrollment of over thirty students from Russia during the last prewar years and the establishment of a Russian language department had opened the way to drawing youth from the vast north. It seemed reasonable to expect that within five years as many as one hundred would enroll. And fourth, Turks, who were of course the largest portion of the population. Anatolia, White believed, was one of the few institutions “that have a real grip on a beginning for the Turks.” Once the war spirit was dispelled, they should be eager to attend. Given the prewar trend, it seemed reasonable to anticipate an enrollment of one hundred Muslims within a short time. Embracing principally these four nationalities, the aim was “to make the College in the right sense of the word truly great.” He urged upon the trustees the need for a campaign to secure resources for repairing the physical plant, for completing building projects interrupted by the war, and for assembling an enlarged faculty of sixteen Americans and twenty-four locals.34 Two innovations that had formed in White’s thinking while in Marsovan gained force now as the NER contemplated postwar reconstruction measures. The first was a department of business administration that would educate leaders in commerce and industry, rather than merely produce clerks and bookkeepers. The second initiative would be training in modern agricultural techniques in order to develop Turkey’s untapped resources and promote reforms. White believed that a department of agricultural technology at Anatolia would have appeal for Muslims wary of more theoretical courses. Having studied and written about agricultural improvement while in Turkey, White now visited technical colleges in the Midwest. His recommendations appeared in an influential work entitled Reconstruction in Turkey prepared for the American Committee for Armenian



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

155

and Syrian Relief and submitted to the American Peace Commission. An essential complement to agricultural instruction, White reasoned, would be demonstration farms. Accordingly, he drew up a detailed proposal for a farm at Anatolia, including a financial plan and a suggested site a mile northeast of Marsovan. Moreover, he explored funding prospects with the Rockefeller Foundation, while also submitting formal proposals to the Board of Trustees to approve and seek financing for these new departures.35 Underlying White’s anticipation of a rebirth of American educational endeavors in Turkey was the assumption, shared by most of his associates, that a new political order following the Ottoman defeat would allow the missionaries freer rein to carry out benevolent designs. White believed the “present gang running the government” should be replaced and outside participation enlisted to administer the country, given the Turks’ demonstrated unsuitability. On the controversial subject of a U.S. declaration of war against Turkey, he differed in private correspondence with NER chairman and ABCFM secretary Barton, who generally opposed hostilities against the Ottomans. In White’s view, the Turkish administration “has been horribly criminal, and ought to be met with active hostility by decent peoples and democratic governments.” As a belligerent of Turkey, the United States would be on firmer ground for making just demands upon the war’s conclusion. In a circular letter to former Anatolia students, White lauded President Wilson’s heralded peace terms proclaiming security of life and the unmolested opportunity for autonomous development for subject peoples of the Ottoman Empire. It was with this expectation that in the fall of 1918 as the war ended he began planning for Anatolia’s reopening the following autumn.36 With the signing of the armistice at Mudros in October 1918, the wartime Ottoman government gave way to one accountable to the Allied powers that occupied Constantinople pending a final peace settlement. As soon as circumstances permitted, the NER dispatched a commission headed by James Barton to survey the situation, followed shortly by relief teams to manage assistance efforts. They included a core of experienced missionaries who by the end of 1919 numbered about eighty-five. Over the next several years, hundreds of men and women took up the task of assisting the stricken peoples of Turkey and adjacent lands. George and Esther White embarked with a group of NER recruits and their families, arriving in Constantinople in March 1919. George had been appointed personnel director for the NER team, which kept him in the capital temporarily while his colleagues proceeded to inland stations. One group of relief workers headed for Merzifon (they began using the Turkish rendering of the town’s name about this time, which also approximated the common Greek version, instead of the Armenian

156

Chapter 4

Marsovan). Their assignment was to deliver emergency assistance to the population of that region and to help restore conditions of normalcy. As they embarked upon their relief duties, the ultimate aim of those returning to Merzifon was the resumption of their educational mission.37 ANATOLIA’S LAST YEARS IN ASIA MINOR 1919–1921 It was a long-honored custom among the missionaries at Merzifon to send a welcoming party to greet newcomers as their wagons descended southward from the mountains toward the town. Rarely was an arrival more fervently anticipated than on March 12, 1919, when Charlotte Willard and Emma Zbinden rode out to receive the first members of the NER delegation. Willard and her three colleagues were frail and exhausted after almost three years among the sickbeds of the hospital camp, out of touch with the outside world, and subsisting on meager rations. The leader of the group they welcomed that day was Rev. Ernest Pye, formerly theology professor and director of the Merzifon Seminary, now wearing the military-style uniform of an NER officer. The relief organization had received pledges of assistance as well as military protection from the Allied governments. They had reached Samsun aboard a U.S. Navy vessel. Since roaming armed bands made the countryside unsafe, a unit of the British military that had recently occupied the area provided an overland escort to Merzifon. Accompanying Pye were two physicians, Jesse K. Marden, who had directed the Anatolia hospital until forced to leave three years before, with his wife, Lucy, and Charles Gannaway, a newcomer from Nebraska. The party also included two single women returning to Marsovan. Fanny Noyes, an Oberlin alumna, had served as a nurse for several years before leaving on furlough in 1915; Annie Phelps, a niece of Charles Tracy, had first come to Marsovan in 1905. George White, accompanied by Esther, joined them not long after as director of the NER in Merzifon, also in full uniform. So close was the cooperation between NER and the Entente governments that Dana Getchell, the lone American male there during the war, was now designated official representative of the Allied Powers. Apparently due to a shortage of British officers, Rev. Pye was assigned provisional command of the unit of Indian troops stationed in Merzifon to provide police protection.38 The immediate imperative was to relieve Willard and her colleagues of the burden of ministering to orphans and displaced people. Next came the repossession of mission property, which required decontamination, extensive repairs, and refurnishing. Food distribution claimed high priority: soup kitchens were set up to serve meals in Merzifon and nearby towns. The NER team distributed clothing and began employment proj-



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

157

ects. The hospital was returned to civilian control and reequipped. The two American doctors with a small team of nurses under the authority of the American Women’s Hospitals began by treating orphans who suffered mainly from skin and eye diseases. Only one in ten was estimated to be free of some illness. They also organized surgical operations and outpatient clinics, enforced hygienic controls, and delivered health care to neighboring towns. NER supported all these undertakings through funding and shipments of supplies and equipment. A total of about sixteen thousand people in the Merzifon region were judged to be in need of relief that first winter. Since NER resources were limited and could not satisfy all needs, assistance was allocated mostly to Christians.39 Charlotte Willard, though exhausted, was not yet ready to leave her cherished work. In withdrawing from the mission grounds in April 1919, Turkish authorities removed the hundreds of Muslim orphans housed there. Willard continued throughout the summer to improve conditions for the remaining Christian orphans, numbering about 260, whenever possible placing them with families. She endeavored as well to identify and retrieve Armenian and Greek orphans being raised as Muslims. Children without parents, homeless and often abused, were the most pitiful of all the war victims. When Willard left for the United States in September, Annie Phelps assumed care of the orphans. The Getchells and Emma Zbinden also now departed to recover their health abroad. Under NER authority and backed by the Allied military, the Merzifon team took bold steps to reverse the injustices of recent years. Armenians who had espoused Islam to save their lives were now encouraged to recant and given new identity documents in their Christian names. Confiscated properties were returned to their owners. Under the terms of the Mudros Armistice, formerly Christian women were free to renounce involuntary marriages to Muslims. Mrs. Gannaway organized a young women’s home in the mission compound for those unfortunates, many of them with infants, providing them with employment in textile crafts or as assistants in the orphanage. Children who had been taken by Turks from deported families were sought out and brought to the orphanage. One Armenian boy, Haig Baronian, has left a moving account of his removal from a Turkish home by a British military officer who brought him to the orphanage. He subsequently attended Anatolia and eventually emigrated to the United States. Armenian and Greek survivors from the surrounding territory, many of them widows, gravitated at this time to Merzifon under NER protection. George White estimated that about two thousand Armenians now resided in Merzifon, less than one-sixth of the prewar number, though many planned to emigrate. White observed that the larger number of Greeks in the surrounding area had endured great suffering. Losses had

158

Chapter 4

also been heavy among the Turks. From the nearly four thousand men recruited from Merzifon for the army in the fall of 1914, only a handful was known to have returned. Muslim refugees from lost Ottoman territories now occupied many of the abandoned homes.40 Beyond addressing such emergency needs as nourishment, health care, and repatriation, NER aspired to revive community life by restoring Christian schools, churches, and businesses. The Anatolia Girls School, by exception, had managed to function throughout most of the war and reached an enrollment of over two hundred by 1918. It had adapted to the needs of the local society, combining American-oriented education with practical household training for girls destined to be young wives and shapers of family life. Following Willard’s departure for furlough, Bertha Morley became acting principal with many orphans among her students. Conditions were not conducive to reopening the Seminary, though that continued to be a goal. George White was determined to reopen Anatolia’s doors that first autumn, despite the widespread poverty and dislocation. He reasoned that the quickest way to inspire confidence and optimism was by restoring conditions of normalcy. Most of the country’s youth had been without formal education throughout the war years. Former Anatolia students had served in the armies of both sides and were now older and scattered. Men of college age were few, but there was a rising generation of younger boys eager to begin studies. It was a small group that convened on October 1, 1919, but during the course of the year, the number rose to about 150. Only six were returning students and all were in preparatory classes. A few of the better qualified orphans were admitted. Numbers were equally divided between Greeks and Armenians, with a sprinkling of other nationalities. The following year, enrollment topped two hundred and included twenty-nine Turks, with some students advancing to the first year of college-level instruction. Including orphans and reclaimed “brides,” the total number receiving some level of instruction on the Anatolia campus reached nearly eight hundred. The College’s finances were unavoidably in poor shape. During the war all fundraising had concentrated on relief efforts. NER’s salary support for American personnel in Merzifon now enabled them to turn part of their efforts to education. More families than anticipated were able to make tuition payments, though many students needed assistance. The College upheld its rule of providing no direct aid without some useful work by the student and was able to help about one-third of the student body through employment in the revived Self-Help workshops. Facing heavy expenses for rehabilitating school facilities amid widespread poverty, the College, with trustee permission, went into debt that first year and prepared a “minimum emergency budget” for the 1920–1921 school



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

159

year. Replacing Dana Getchell as treasurer was Theodore Riggs, the youngest of Edward Riggs’s four sons and the only one to have studied commerce and law rather than theology.41 Eight members of Anatolia’s faculty had perished in the massacres and most of the others had fled. President White now assembled a skeleton staff made up of former students and NER workers, enlarged by new arrivals as the student body grew. They included Timotheos M. Papadopoulos, awarded a bachelor’s degree belatedly for studies completed in 1916, and assigned to teach English and music. By the beginning of the 1920–1921 school year the full-time faculty of fifteen consisted of four Americans, four Greeks, three Armenians, two Turks, one Russian, and one Swiss. Another six teachers offered part-time service. The most senior faculty member was Demetrios Theocharides ’88, professor of Greek language and literature. The most junior were the four American tutors. Carl Compton had left Merzifon in 1915, completed a master’s degree at Oberlin College, and accepted service with the YMCA in Russia during the war years together with his wife, Ruth McGavren Compton. They now returned in response to President White’s urgent appeal. The other three recent college graduates were James E. Goldbury (Harvard), Donald M. Hosford (Doane College), and Walter B. Wiley (Dartmouth). In addition to teaching, the tutors organized athletics and formed a YMCA branch.42 Campus buildings, restored initially by the NER for relief operations, were gradually returned to academic use. The value of the physical plant at its original cost, according to an inventory of 1915, was about $150,000, but the current cost of replacing it was seen to be twice that amount. One major building, the old Main Hall, had outlived its usefulness and needed to be replaced. The next step would be to secure funding to complete the building campaign interrupted by the war. Meanwhile, Dana Getchell, treasurer of Anatolia for the past fifteen years and now on furlough in the United States, consulted with the State Department about pressing claims for indemnity from the Turkish government for damages to the campus while occupied by its troops.43 In pursuit of his project to develop agricultural training as part of Anatolia’s new offerings, George White arranged for the NER team to include a specialist in that field. Lincoln D. Kelsey had studied at the Massachusetts Agricultural College before becoming a county agent. He shared White’s enthusiasm for a demonstration farm as the best way of convincing Turkish cultivators of the validity of new methods. It would also expand opportunities for student employment under Anatolia’s Self-Help operations. Accordingly, the Board of Managers petitioned the trustees to appoint the Kelseys to permanent service in Merzifon and to raise the required funds, estimated at $300,000, to acquire land and equip the farm. The trustees approved the plan in principle, but on condition that the

160

Chapter 4

necessary funds could be secured. Before the project could advance, other concerns seized the attention of Dr. White and his colleagues.44 The missionaries returned to Turkey in early 1919, just as political developments had begun to move in very different directions from those they anticipated. They shared the general expectation that a defeated Turkey would be made to account for its misdeeds, particularly its brutal treatment of Christian subjects. NER’s fundraising publicity trumpeted the theme of Turkish guilt and degeneracy in contrast to Armenian innocence and entitlement. The obvious solution was finally to establish secure and autonomous regions for Armenians and other Ottoman minorities under international guarantees, as had been promised repeatedly. James Barton urged upon his contacts in the Wilson administration the strengthening and expansion of the minuscule Armenian republic established at Erivan in Transcaucasia in 1918. Barton authored a proposal submitted to the Paris Peace Conference for a federated Turkey in which religious minorities would enjoy regional autonomy. President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” for a new postwar order, including self-determination for the subject nationalities of the Ottoman Empire, found the American Board’s emissaries in enthusiastic accord. The Paris Peace Conference, meeting during the first half of 1919, seemed to espouse the same position. The recommendations of the KingCrane fact-finding commission appointed by Wilson that year, and of a U.S. military mission, headed by General James G. Harbord, reinforced the anticipation that portions of Asia Minor and Transcaucasia occupied by Armenians, Kurds, and possibly other indigenous peoples would become self-governing under mandatory supervision by an external authority. In the case of the Armenians, that mandatory power was expected by many to be the United States. James Barton and his associates worked behind the scenes on behalf of these objectives throughout the prolonged and complex peace negotiations.45 George White was among those Near Eastern experts consulted by the King-Crane Commission. He strongly recommended that Armenia be given a secure status beyond Turkish control under an American mandate. White elaborated optimistically in a response to the Interchurch World Movement of North America: Americans, more than any other people on earth, have the confidence of all the races and classes and creeds. All want America as the mandatory power, most want American institutions and efforts in this country to continue and do an enlarging work; unless our future is untrue to our past, Anatolia College will be one of the strongest forces of its kind among the Armenian people; the same is essentially true for the larger numbers of Greeks in Asia Minor.46



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

161

Only their confident assumption that Muslims would never again rule over Christian peoples in Turkey can serve to explain the bold measures by NER teams at this time. There is little doubt that their actions to reverse involuntary conversions to Islam, nullify forced marriages of Christian women to Muslims, remove Christian children from Muslim homes, repatriate deported Armenians and Greeks, and repossess Christian property seized by Turks were eminently just. But it was no less certain that those acts would earn the bitter resentment of the momentarily defeated and humbled Turks. That they were carried out by American missionaries who had long affirmed their acceptance of Ottoman governance, now appearing in NER uniforms and exercising authority by delegation from the victorious occupying forces, was sure to confirm Turkish suspicions that the missionaries would inevitably side with the country’s Christian enemies. Publications by American relief organizations and correspondence by their officials openly expressed that predisposition. NER and missionary strategies obviously presupposed that hostilities had ended conclusively, that a settlement designed by the Allies would shortly be imposed, and that Christian communities would be restored under new safeguards. They clearly did not allow for the possibility of a new conflict resulting in a return to Turkish dominion and producing dire consequences for Christians who, with NER’s encouragement and assistance, had abandoned the survival strategies of the war years.47 Following the replacement of the Young Turk regime by a government under Allied control, the Entente victors had established a military administration—the Allied High Commission based in Constantinople—that deployed units in parts of the interior. However, as the postwar demobilization caused Allied forces to gradually withdraw, they soon became inadequate to exercise control throughout that vast territory at a time when civil authority had largely broken down. The Merzifon region was one of many where bands of army deserters preyed upon travelers, necessitating the British military escort for the NER team traveling to Merzifon in March 1919. When the detachment of Indian troops assigned to police the area was ordered to withdraw that June, George White, alarmed by the threat of disorder, traveled to Constantinople and appealed to British headquarters to allow them to remain. In his written statement to the U.S. High Commissioner, White reported that the Turks in the Merzifon region remained unrepentant for all they had done. Circumstances now resembled those of 1895 and 1915 and threatened “massacre, plunder and unbridled passion after the old established character of the Turks.” The withdrawal of British forces would be a signal for precipitate flight by Armenians and Greeks, and immediate attack by the Turks, who would rise up and fall upon the fugitives. The blaze thus kindled would spread until “an area including about 500,000 people would fall into a condition

162

Chapter 4

of anarchy and bloodshed.” White expressed his dismay at delays at the peace conference and asserted the need for an Anglo-Saxon mandatory power as the most acceptable solution, even for the Turks themselves. He was successful in securing a detachment of troops to guard the campus and keep order in the town until September, when it finally withdrew.48 It was only a few weeks after the missionaries’ return to Merzifon that a Greek army landed at Izmir (Smyrna) to occupy Turkey’s Aegean coast with the concurrence of the Allies, including the United States. The Greek government’s intention was to extend its control over lands considered to have been Hellenic before the Turkish occupation of Asia Minor centuries before. The stakes were high for the Christian minorities who would be acutely endangered should the Greek venture fail. Although Turkey had capitulated in October 1918, and had lost forever her vast Arab-populated territories, the country was by no means prostrate. It had thwarted the Allied invasion of the Dardanelles during the war and recovered its eastern provinces when the collapse of the czarist government in 1917 precipitated the withdrawal of Russian forces. The Greek occupation of the Aegean coastal region, seven months after the armistice with Turkey, galvanized elements of the Turkish military to form a revolutionary movement in the interior provinces beyond the control of Constantinople. Their objectives were to repulse this new threat to Turkey’s heartland, neutralize the puppet government under Allied authority, and oppose any foreign mandate over Turkish lands. A new war commenced in western Asia Minor.49 The dramatic rise of Turkish nationalism under Kemal Atatürk is a well-known story. For the purposes of this account, it is important to note its fatal consequences for Anatolia College’s continued presence in Turkey. The movement began in the north-central region of Asia Minor where Merzifon is located. By coincidence, George White, en route to Constantinople in June 1919 to request the continued deployment of Allied troops in Merzifon, happened to meet briefly General Mustapha Kemal, who had arrived at Samsun port to launch the new force. It was not long before the growing power of the revolutionary movement, initially headquartered at the provincial capital of Sivas, came to encompass Merzifon as the Allied-backed regime in Constantinople ceased to exercise practical authority across the expanse of Anatolia. President White was alarmed when British troops finally withdrew that September, informing his staff that any were free to depart in view of the mounting danger. Most of them elected to remain.50 Over the next year and a half, friction grew between the Americans in Merzifon and the new nationalist regime now based at Ankara that struggled both to consolidate its authority throughout the interior provinces and also wage war against Greek forces advancing from the west.



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

163

Restrictions on travel hampered the movement of students between their homes and the College. Officials demanded back taxes and monitored courses of study and teachers’ qualifications. Mail was again censored. Anatolia’s requirement that Muslim students attend Christian worship and Bible lessons, suspended following official opposition in the last year before the war but reinstated in 1919, was again withdrawn upon threat that the school would be closed. Many local officials were seen to be friendly and cooperative, but not those representing the nationalist administration. George White was astonished by the numbers of Turkish soldiers, their equipment and their fighting spirit, equal to the first days of the Great War. Clearly the regenerative powers of the Turks had been underestimated.51 In the opinion of William Peet, now coordinator of NER operations in Constantinople, by soliciting British military protection, George White had provoked animosity against the Merzifon missionaries. By relying “more conspicuously upon the foreign military arm” than other relief teams did in districts such as Konia, Caesaria, and Sivas, the Americans at Merzifon had angered Turkish leaders, who regarded them as adherents of foreign designs to dismember the Turkish state. The U.S. consular officer in Samsun relayed the opinion attributed to White and Dr. Marden that the villages of the Merzifon and Amasia regions were “violently antinationalist,” which suggests that the two NER representatives may have been slow to grasp the growing strength and popular support for the new revolutionary movement.52 George White, on the contrary, attributed much of the tension in Merzifon to the personal bitterness of a local lawyer, Saduk Bey Mehami, who occupied the Anatolia-owned home where Professor Hagopian had resided before his deportation and murder. When the missionaries returned, Dana Getchell, backed by British troops, demanded that he pay rent to Anatolia for the use of that property. In December 1920, Saduk Bey was appointed commissioner by the Ankara regime to monitor NER operations and all American activities in the area. Although this official’s personal grievance very likely aggravated a worsening situation, it seems that the Americans and the institutions they represented had been set on a collision course with the nationalist movement from the time they returned to Merzifon. Accustomed to the protection of the Capitulations and anticipating internationally mandated controls over Turkey, they were slow to perceive that an entirely different set of political realities was taking shape.53 Given that the two minorities whom Anatolia primarily served, Greeks and Armenians, were now both regarded by the revolutionary government as national enemies, Anatolia no longer had a viable position from which to pursue conciliation among rival ethnic groups. In the eyes of

164

Chapter 4

the embattled nationalist authorities, resentful of foreign intervention, Americans who worked for the benefit of the despised Christian communities were highly suspect. That jaundiced view became hardened by the Treaty of Sèvres in August 1920, signed by the compliant rival government in Constantinople. The treaty imposed Allied war demands, including the cession of most of Thrace to Greece, Greek administrative control of the Izmir region pending a plebiscite on the area’s ultimate disposition, an independent Armenia including eastern Ottoman provinces, an autonomous Kurdistan, and the subordination of Turkey’s finances to an international commission. Its provisions provoked greater popular support for the Ankara regime, which rejected its terms. In the Pontus region adjoining Merzifon, nationalist leaders became increasingly disturbed over fears of a Greek invasion and schemes by Armenian and Greek elements to detach that region from the Turkish state. Bands of irregular Christian fighters did battle with Muslim counterparts in the surrounding mountains. After the nationalist government repudiated the Treaty of Sèvres and boldly invaded the small Armenian republic in Transcaucasia later that year, only by determined intervention could the Allies have imposed their peace terms. It soon became evident, however, that the American and European publics did not share the fervor of the more internationally minded diplomats, relief workers, and missionaries for bold and costly measures on behalf of Near Eastern ethnic and religious minorities. When the U.S. Congress refused to commit the country to President Wilson’s bold designs by rejecting the Versailles Treaty (1919) and an American mandate for Armenia (1920), and the war-weary and discordant European allies proved unwilling to enforce the Treaty of Sèvres and halt the Turkish resurgence, the prospects for carving out new self-governing territories for Asia Minor’s minorities faded. It was only a question of when and in what fashion the inevitable clash between Anatolia College and the Kemalist regime would occur.54 It erupted midway through the second school year after Anatolia’s reopening as Turkish and Greek military forces vied for control of western Asia Minor. In the Pontus region, the nationalist government tightened its control over Greek towns and villages, appointing as military commander for central Asia Minor the severe Nurettin Pasha. The event apparently sparking the crisis at Merzifon was the murder of Zeki Ketani, one of Anatolia’s two Turkish faculty members, just outside the College’s walls in mid-February 1921. Local officials blamed Greeks, although no evidence to that effect is known to have existed. The Americans believed that Turks, incensed against a Muslim working with Christians, had committed the crime.



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

165

At that same time, the nationalist government shifted its military headquarters for central Asia Minor to Merzifon. Nurettin Pasha and a judicial official from a military tribunal empowered to try political offenses ordered a search of the College’s premises. Scores of soldiers occupied the campus. Their purposes were to investigate the murder, ferret out arms and ammunition believed to be hidden there, and uncover evidence of disloyal political activity. The first two proving futile, they found maps and historical texts in the classrooms and library that satisfied their conviction that Greek faculty and students were linked to a seditious revolutionary organization that sought to join the Pontus region of Turkey to Greece. By an unfortunate coincidence, Anatolia’s Greek cultural association had carried the historical Hellenic name “Pontus” in the past, though it was formally dropped when Anatolia resumed operation in 1919. Suspicions focused on George White when a letter was found in the College’s files from Greeks in the town of Maden asking White, in his capacity as NER director, to secure the intervention of British officers to halt harsh measures by Turkish officials. The fact that half of Anatolia’s students were Greek, that the school taught Greek language and literature and had accumulated historical and cultural materials related to Hellenism, made it virtually certain that the impassioned investigators would find material to sustain their assumptions of collaboration with the enemy. They promptly arrested and imprisoned the members of the executive committee of Anatolia’s Greek cultural society, composed of four faculty and two students, as well as a handful of employees, for trial by the wartime tribunal. A month passed before the next and final blow. The Mutesarif (regional governor) came from Amasia to join General Jemil Jahid in delivering an order from the Ministry of Interior Affairs to close Anatolia and its associated institutions for being implicated with the Pontus political movement. All students were dismissed and sent to their homes. The hospital was banned from accepting new patients and was placed under state doctors pending its closure. All Americans were directed to leave within four days, except for two junior teachers who would be allowed to care for, but not educate, the several hundred Christian orphans. Carl and Ruth Compton and Donald M. Hosford were so designated. The other missionaries, relief workers, and their families, twenty-nine persons in all, were taken by armed guard to Samsun and from there to Constantinople by an American naval vessel.55 The brave attempt to restore Anatolia College in Merzifon in 1919 rested on the conviction that it could serve the highest interests of the people of Turkey, Christians and Muslims. Unforeseen and uncontrollable events reshaping the country’s destiny rendered that goal unachievable. During

166

Chapter 4

Anatolia’s year and a half of postwar operation, all its students were in the lower grades and none graduated. As George White, for the second time, led the American staff away from Merzifon, the College’s future seemed uncertain at best. TURKEY OR GREECE? 1921–1924 Although Anatolia College, with its associated institutions, had been closed, its students dispersed, and most of its remaining staff expelled, the tragedy that had engulfed the school and the Christians of Merzifon for the prior six years had not yet run its course. There remained on its campus about six hundred orphans, victims of the violence and dislocation of the war years. Several Anatolia teachers and students languished in a Turkish jail in Amasia awaiting court-martial. The authorities had allowed two young teachers, who in their view had not been in Merzifon long enough to gain a grasp of local languages or otherwise pose a threat to nationalist sensibilities, to remain in order to provide for the children and oversee mission property. Donald Hosford had arrived in 1919, just after finishing college studies, to teach mathematics and English. Carl Compton, while young in appearance, at age thirty had already experienced several years of adventure-laden service. During his first two-year tour at Anatolia (1913–1915), he had witnessed the Armenian deportations and traveled over bandit-infested terrain to deliver word to the U.S. ambassador and to transport gold back to Merzifon. During the war, he and his bride, Ruth McGavren Compton, worked with refugees in Transcaucasia and Russia under chaotic conditions, traveling the length of Asia and back. Their experience coping with human suffering under the most trying circumstances helped them now to meet the challenge of sustaining the orphanage and protecting mission interests under a hostile military administration. George White later wrote, “Especial recognition should be given to the dauntless three who remained in Marsovan. Perhaps there is no post of greater heroism anywhere than that has proved to be.”56 With the schools closed, the Comptons and Hosford, originally brought to Anatolia as teachers, now came under the employ of NER. Carl assumed overall responsibility, including financial management and relations with Turkish officials, while Ruth and Don concentrated on managing the girls and boys orphanages. Using NER funds and materials, they engaged local workers in weaving, carpentry, and related trades to train orphans in a range of skills. A Greek nurse, Anthe Kouzoujak, together with a colleague, staffed an infirmary at the orphanage where a Turkish doctor made daily calls. Their small group was strengthened when Ger-



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

167

trude Anthony and Susan Corning, from the NER contingent expelled in March, won permission to return. Meanwhile, the Greek army was advancing eastward in the spring of 1921 toward the nationalist capital at Ankara. Turkish authorities reacted by tightening control over towns and villages under their sway and intensifying measures to forestall the possibility of Christian subjects aiding the enemy. Greek men were inducted into labor battalions, where they suffered cruel treatment, or were jailed. Entire communities were uprooted, especially along the Black Sea coast, and forced to move inland. With war fever mounting, irregular Turkish units called “Chetes” preyed upon Christian neighborhoods. One of the most notorious was a band of Laz warriors from the Black Sea town of Kerasun (Giresun), led by the feared Topal Osman on punitive raids to loot and burn villages and towns throughout the Pontus region.57 In July 1921. they fell upon Merzifon, plundering shops and homes, killing and deporting men, and violating women. Greeks and Armenians fled the burning Christian sector, some hundreds seeking refuge within the Anatolia compound. Carl Compton and Don Hosford managed to secure the campus perimeter and to shelter as many desperate souls as possible. By invoking American ownership and confronting intruders, they succeeded in deterring the invading mob. At one point, a Turkish officer who had been a student at Anatolia guided about thirty distraught women to the compound. As many as twenty-five babies were left by fleeing parents. After five days of mayhem, the raiders departed for other destinations. Some hundreds of terrified victims remained for weeks under the care and protection of the small team within the college walls until conditions improved enough that they could return to rebuild their homes. Don Hosford estimated that “upwards of 700,” or about one-third of the remaining Christian population after the war, were killed and four hundred homes burned. Those lost included Tateos M. Zhamgochian, Anatolia alumnus of 1907, who had taught Armenian language and literature at the College until its closing, and Hovannes Sivaslian, supervisor of the College workshops, who was arrested and not seen again.58 Another drama ensued late that summer for the Anatolians seized during the investigation in February. They had been jailed since then, pending hearings before an “Independence Tribunal” at the regional center of Amasia, one of several such courts set up in provincial towns to prosecute alleged disloyalty to the nationalist regime. The accused were six in number. Professor and alumnus Demetrios Theocharides had begun his teaching career at Anatolia twenty-nine years earlier. A former student praised his ability to bring classical authors to life in the classroom. The next most senior faculty member in the group, Gregory Chekaloff, had taught Russian since before the war. Younger teachers jailed in Amasia

168

Chapter 4

were Charalambos I. Evstathiades, a 1914 graduate, instructor of Greek and assistant librarian, and George D. Lambrinos, who while still enrolled as a student assisted in teaching Greek. Simeon A. Ananiades, a nineteenyear-old student from Samsun, was a top athlete in track and aspired to be a doctor. At the head of his class, he had given the valedictory oration at the previous spring’s graduation ceremony of the preparatory school, urging his fellows to: “Carry on, carry on, till the year twenty-four. No half-way sufficeth, the best is before.” The other imprisoned student was Anastasios S. Pavlides, also from Samsun, who had begun his studies at Anatolia in 1912 at age twelve and resumed them after the war. All six faced Turkish military justice for holding positions in Anatolia’s Greek Literary Society, which the court judged to be a subversive group that aimed to join the Pontus region to Greece. They had no benefit of counsel, right of appeal, or any foreign intervention on their behalf. Their few American colleagues remaining at Merzifon were preoccupied with the aftermath of the massacre there and learned only later of the verdict at Amasia. In August the accused were all found guilty. Five of the six were hanged in the public square of Amasia. Only Gregory Chekaloff was given a lighter sentence by virtue of holding Russian citizenship, and eventually succeeded in reaching Greece. Among the scores of Greeks and others from the region who fell victim to the tribunals was Pavlos I. Pavlides, Pastor of the Merzifon Evangelical Church and a graduate of the Seminary.59 The small team of Americans at Merzifon had been under immense strain from the events of the summer and the continuing responsibility of aiding stricken Christians and caring for orphans. Don Hosforth and Gertrude Anthony returned to the United States that fall. The Comptons and Susan Corning departed from Merzifon in the summer of 1922 for leave. Compton was subsequently reassigned to Ankara as NER representative to the nationalist administration. One of his principal tasks was to petition the government to allow placement abroad of the thousands of Christian children residing in NER orphanages throughout the country. In Merzifon, George St. John Williams, a military veteran from Foxburg, Pennsylvania, became head of NER operations. Meanwhile, the indefatigable Charlotte Willard, returning from home leave accompanied by Gertrude Anthony and nurse Fanny Noyes, managed to gain permission to continue their work. They pursued the organization of home industries for the few remaining Greeks and Armenians, mostly women and children, while preparing to resume mission duties. In the fall of 1922 the nationalist government agreed to the departure of Christian orphans for placement in NER orphanages in neighboring countries. The Merzifon team prepared the children under its care for their journey, with Gertrude Anthony escorting the first group of close



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

169

to three hundred to Samsun for embarkation. The age limit was set at seventeen, but some older youths managed to circumvent inspection and reach the anchored ships in the harbor. At least four such young men, two of them junior teachers at Anatolia, Mihran G. Hovagimian and Aram K. Zelveyan, had remained hidden for up to a year and a half on the Anatolia campus. Merzifon also served as NER collection center for hundreds of children exiting the interior who had to be fed, treated for diseases, and outfitted for travel. While engaged in this work, George Williams contracted pneumonia and died. One of the evacuated boys, Efthymios N. Kouzoujakoglou (later Couzinos), expressed great admiration for Williams’s courage in encounters with Turkish police. By early 1923, the stream of orphans ceased and NER operations were concluded in Turkey. Charlotte Willard now concentrated on preparing to reopen the Girls School.60 Most of the twenty-nine Anatolia and NER personnel expelled from Merzifon in March 1921 accepted new assignments to other Near Eastern posts. Dr. Jesse Marden, who had labored to make Anatolia’s hospital one of the finest medical centers in provincial Turkey, took up service in Istanbul, but after one year was sent to the Caucasus to supervise care for orphans. Theodore Riggs with his family and Dana and Susan Riggs Getchell were relocated to Thessaloniki, Greece. The couple whose lives had been inextricably linked to Anatolia College for over thirty years, George and Esther White, left Merzifon for the second time with a heavy heart. President White advised his wife to plan for an early return. He wrote to a colleague that “the people of this country never needed us more than they do now.” His deeper sentiments at that time as expressed in his account to the trustees are noteworthy: “To the best of our ability, we have lived in the spirit of the Gospel, and have wrought in loyalty to our Master, and with friendliness for all men. There is a strong conviction that the blood shed is really sacrificial, and that Providence is in a sense bound thereby to bless our work in the future, or at least to reward the labors of those who come after us.”61 That summer White traveled to Tiflis, capital of the Republic of Georgia, on the recommendation of Theodore Elmer, now head of NER in that region. The trip aboard a U.S. naval vessel was arranged by the American High Commissioner for a group of Americans traveling as guests of the Russian government. Great numbers of Armenians had fled Turkey for Transcaucasia and there was interest in Americans taking over the management and financial support of an existing school in Tiflis. However, neither the material nor the political prospects seemed promising under Bolshevik rule. White was still set upon resurrecting Anatolia in Merzifon. Very likely, one of his reasons for traveling to Transcaucasia was to assess the likelihood of again attracting Russian subjects to the College in Turkey.

170

Chapter 4

Returning to the United States, White met with Anatolia’s Board of Trustees to review current conditions in Turkey and “the hope entertained by the faculty and Board of managers with reference to the future.” He resumed, for the next eighteen months, his wartime post as NER director in Minnesota while pondering the future of Anatolia College. For White, as for many American missionaries who had linked their lives to the people of the Near East, the future began to appear much different from when they had set out with Wilsonian aspirations at the war’s end, less than three years earlier.62 Throughout the half century of missionary activity at Merzifon preceding World War I, the resident Americans had faced recurring dangers with confidence based in large measure upon the extraterritorial privileges provided by the Capitulations and the willingness of the U.S. Embassy in Constantinople to intercede with Turkish officialdom on their behalf. During Anatolia’s last phase in Turkey (1919–1921), the Capitulations ceased to be in effect, and diplomatic relations between the United States and Turkey remained suspended, leaving mission personnel unprotected. It was true that the United States maintained an official presence in Constantinople under the provisions of the 1918 armistice in the form of a High Commissioner. That post was held from 1919 by Mark Bristol, a former U.S. naval officer. However, he had no formal relations with the unrecognized rebel government in Ankara and could wield little influence over turbulent events in the country’s interior regions. In any event, Admiral Bristol reflected and possibly influenced a shifting U.S. stance toward Turkey, its Christian minorities, and missionary endeavors. In keeping with the trend toward political disengagement from Europe following the Wilson years and Congress’s rejection of the Versailles Treaty, the High Commissioner seemed to favor a pragmatic policy of establishing working relations with the emerging new forces in Turkey. Many missionaries perceived a strong bias on Bristol’s part in favor of the nationalists and against indigenous Christians. George White believed the admiral had given undue credence to the charges of Turkish officials who closed Anatolia in 1921 and had unfairly considered White responsible. A year after the July massacres at Merzifon, Carl Compton had the opportunity to call on Admiral Bristol to inform him of those events but found the official reluctant to believe him. Young Donald Hosforth, upon leaving Turkey that October after twenty-one eventful months in Merzfon, did not mince words in his parting recommendations to the NER: “First, the replacement of Admiral Bristol. I believe that I represent the opinion of the large majority of Americans in Anatolia when I say that he is so strongly pro-Turk that he is not only grossly unfair to the minority peoples in Asia Minor, but, also, that he fails to give to Americans in Anatolia the sympathy and strong support and protection



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

171

which they believe they should have from their representative in Constantinople.” James Barton became alarmed by such reports, particularly Bristol’s refusal to defend Ernest Riggs, president of Euphrates College at Harput, when the nationalists expelled him that same summer. (Riggs grew up in Merzifon, son of missionary Edward Riggs.) Barton petitioned Secretary of State Hughes to replace Bristol, but without success. Edward Moore, president of the American Board, appealed to Secretary Hughes for assurances that the U.S. government would continue to protect the rights and privileges of American missionaries in Turkey as it had in the past. Hughes replied that the Department of State had not changed “its settled policy” toward mission work but that the severance of diplomatic relations with Turkey and political conditions in Asia Minor “render it difficult” to safeguard American interests “as efficaciously as would be possible in normal circumstances.” Missionary influence in Turkey was clearly waning.63 Political currents continued to cascade against the interests of the Christian minorities and the missionaries whose work in Turkey had become almost wholly identified with them. By a series of adroit diplomatic and military moves, the Ankara government extended its control throughout Asia Minor and neutralized opposition from the divided Allied governments. The balance swung decisively in its favor when Kemalist forces drove the Greek army back to the Aegean coast and overwhelmed its base at Izmir in the summer of 1922. There was no longer any serious challenge to the sovereignty of the nationalist government. Those new realities were acknowledged by the Treaty of Lausanne the following year, which superseded that of Sèvres. It defined Turkey’s borders to include all of Asia Minor as well as Eastern Thrace and the former Russian provinces of Kars and Ardahan, now reclaimed from the small Armenian republic on Turkey’s eastern frontier.64 The Lausanne Peace Conference also produced a Procrustean solution to the jumble of mutually hostile nationalities by dictating an exchange of Greek Orthodox and Muslim minorities between Turkey and Greece under the auspices of the League of Nations. (Greek inhabitants of Istanbul and Muslims residing in Western Thrace were omitted from this exchange.) If, in the long run, this bold measure toward religious and racial homogeneity contributed to ending communal strife and promoting peace within the region, at the time it produced immense hardship for entire communities uprooted from their ancestral lands. However, for the great majority of the Christians of Asia Minor, the Lausanne accord merely legitimized circumstances already forced upon them by the long years of international and civil war. Most of Turkey’s Armenians and Greeks had already been compelled to flee their homes between 1914 and 1923 for refuges abroad.

172

Chapter 4

Another provision of the Lausanne treaty signed in 1923 directly affected all missionary work by recognizing the earlier abrogation of the Capitulations by the Ottoman government. That meant that any resumption of missionary activities would be subject to far less favorable legal conditions than before the war. Although the U.S. government was not a signatory to the treaty, there was little reason to suppose that the Harding administration would challenge these new rulings or that American diplomatic representatives in Turkey would champion missionary interests to the same extent as in the prewar era. U.S. geopolitical interests in the Near East now responded more to commercial considerations, especially prospects for sharing in petroleum development. This became evident when American representatives at Lausanne concluded a treaty of amity and commerce with the nationalist government, subject to ratification by the U.S. Senate.65 The American Board now faced a major dilemma over resuming operations in what had long been considered its most promising field. In the words of veteran missionary Henry Riggs, as a result of the war and its aftermath, the Protestant missions in Turkey had “suffered losses of a magnitude and of an irreparable character unparalleled anywhere.” The expulsion of Christians from Turkey “resulted in the demolition of the whole structure of the work of those missions to a degree that is difficult fully to grasp.” Twenty-three missionaries had died, almost all as a direct result of wartime conditions. Seven of the seventeen stations had closed permanently, the others, like Merzifon, barely hanging on with skeletal staffs in the face of hostility. All three seminaries, six of the eight colleges, and forty of the forty-eight mission high schools were closed. The evangelical communities were mostly dissolved, their pastors and members fled, their churches empty or demolished.66 Other obstacles seemed to dash any hope of restoring the network of institutions in which the American Board had invested millions of dollars as well as unending human effort. The new Turkish government was determined to prevent foreign interests from becoming entrenched and undermining its authority, as had happened under Ottoman rule, or to impede its drive to build a new polity based upon Turkish identity and nationalist values. A wave of xenophobia produced strict new regulations on foreign schools that prevented the teaching of religion and imposed controls over their administration, curriculum, teachers, textbooks, and use of foreign languages. Many of the mission people who had lived through the horrors of the massacres and deportations found it hard to overcome a deep skepticism that Muslim Turks were capable of spiritual regeneration. They were deeply disturbed that perpetrators of vile deeds on a vast scale showed so little sign of guilt or remorse and had seemingly eluded any accountability.67



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

173

Given their understandable dismay and indignation over the destruction of Christian communities that had been their main preoccupation, the missionaries were less cognizant of the heavy losses suffered by Muslims themselves in the series of wars since 1877. Great numbers had been killed or uprooted from lost imperial lands. Turks as well as Christians had suffered under the oppressive and tyrannical rule of the Sultans. At great cost, the rebel Turks brought about an internal political transformation largely following Western nationalist precedents that the Christian world could not anticipate.68 The most stubborn reality facing the missionaries was that the “nominal” Christians upon whom they had staked their efforts were mostly gone from Turkey, other than a concentration remaining in Constantinople and some lingering pockets elsewhere. Not only had the human flocks they had shepherded for a century vanished from the Turkish landscape, but those same stricken people, now perhaps more than ever, needed material and spiritual succor in refugee camps and orphanages elsewhere. The NER, accordingly, closed out its work in Turkey in 1923 in order to redouble it among exiled Christians in nearby countries. The removal from Turkey of the Christian minorities held still deeper implications for the basic rationale underlying evangelical endeavors in that country, namely, that the indigenous Christian communities should serve to bridge the abyss separating Protestant evangelists from their primary target, the vast hordes of nonbelievers. The Muslim multitudes now seemed less accessible than ever to the word of Christ.69 However formidable the obstacles to continuing work in Turkey might be, they could not deter committed missionaries who believed they were carrying out God’s will. At a meeting in Constantinople in January 1923, forty or more missionaries from stations across Turkey pondered the full range of considerations before deciding to persevere in their cause. They concluded that the recent setbacks should by no means be seen as reason to abandon their sacred task. The need for new sacrifices only ennobled their calling. Turkey as a mission field had been virtually the exclusive preserve of the American Board. If it deserted the cause now, it was unlikely that any other Protestant agency would step forward. Who else could match the tremendous investment not only in property but in linguistically proficient teachers, doctors, nurses, and preachers? Accordingly, they resolved unanimously “to put our lives into the friendly approach of the peoples of this land, believing that to be the largest service which we can render to our Master in the coming years.” The missionaries’ resolution was strongly backed by Congregational Church leaders at a series of conferences held in several U.S. cities that same year. Those inclined toward faith-based optimism might argue further that more Turks in fact favored missionary involvement than opposed it, that

174

Chapter 4

the current phase of nationalist passion and xenophobia would run its course, that restrictions on schools and other activities would eventually be relaxed, and that new opportunities for direct evangelism among Muslims beckoned in the future. As James Barton intoned, “The hundreds of missionary graves, stretching across the country and consecrating every mission station, proclaim a missionary daring and purpose that is an inheritance of precious value to our generation.” Accordingly, that fall the ABCFM resolved to continue its work in Turkey for the benefit of the Turkish people. Its decision was eloquently articulated by ABCFM’s Foreign Secretary, Ernest W. Riggs, destined to become a future president of Anatolia College, though, alas, not in Turkey.70 The extended debate over the future of mission work in Turkey came to divide the missionary community as opportunities remained few under the intransigent Kemalist government. The controversy bore direct consequences for the future of Anatolia College in Merzifon. Charlotte Willard began English lessons for Turkish children, including boys, by permission of the authorities and prepared to reopen the Girls School, which she accomplished in 1924. Would not Anatolia, too, take up the challenge again? It was a moot question whether Anatolia would ever be able to resume operations in Merzifon. Although it owned a substantial campus, there seemed little reason to suppose the school could again attract a significant clientele. Greeks and Armenians were mostly gone. There was little prospect of drawing Russians under Bolshevik rule. Even if Turkish boys could be induced to attend, there would be no Christian student body to absorb and influence them. New legal strictures scarcely allowed even the rudiments of a Christian education. Furthermore, a heavy legacy shrouded Merzifon. Its Christian population had undergone three massacres in twenty-six years and was now reduced to a remnant of mostly aging women. Anatolia had lost its entire indigenous staff to violence, deportation, and emigration. The Merzifon Seminary, Anatolia’s sister institution and the original reason for its existence, would not reopen; the American Board in 1922 had sponsored jointly with other bodies a nonsectarian School of Religious Education in Istanbul in place of its three defunct seminaries in Turkey’s interior. In brief, Merzifon was a very different place from what Marsovan had been.71 These considerations weighed heavily upon George White, whose ties to Merzifon reached back over thirty years. Gradually, he came to believe that resurrecting Anatolia there a second time was scarcely feasible. His personal disappointments ran deep. He had lost dear friends and colleagues and seen his life’s work ruined. He felt a bond with the Turks of the region, but held strong reservations about Turkish character after the massacres. Since Charles Tracy’s departure and the beginning of the Great War, Anatolia’s relations with the local authorities had been



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

175

marked by repeated altercations. The crowning blow to White’s hopes of reestablishing Anatolia in Merzifon came via ABCFM secretary James Barton. At the Lausanne Peace Conference in late 1922, the Turkish delegate, Ahmed Shukri Bey, had offered encouragement for the continuation of Board-sponsored schools under certain conditions. With specific regard to Merzifon, however, he informed Barton of “a deep prejudice” there against both White and Dana Getchell, “which it might be impossible to control.” After considering also a report by Admiral Bristol, the remarks of other Turks, and the opinion of William Peet, Barton counseled against testing Turkish resolve on the matter of White and Getchell returning to Merzifon. This development did not come as a total surprise to White; he had written earlier to Getchell: “You can hardly hope to go back now, and I am tarred with the same stick and very possibly to a worse degree.”72 With the door seemingly closed in Merzifon, Dr. White turned his attention to Greece, now the principal site of NER operations. The preponderance of Christian refugees from Turkey was being resettled in Greece’s northern province of Macedonia. They included Evangelicals and even some former Anatolia students. Positive signals came from former colleagues in the region of Thessaloniki, where the ABCFM maintained its only mission in Greece. It had begun before that territory passed from Ottoman to Greek sovereignty as a result of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). The mission was now staffed by J. Riggs Brewster, who had begun his career as a tutor at Anatolia eighteen years earlier. Its activities included a school for Balkan refugee children. Dana and Susan Getchell had arrived, following their recuperation in the United States from the war years at Merzifon, to head NER operations. Theodore Riggs, Susan’s brother and treasurer at Anatolia in its last years, was now assisting the American Farm School near Thessaloniki, an institution that had developed through missionary inspiration during the last years of Ottoman rule. Messages from White’s former associates attested to the great educational, spiritual, and material needs of the masses of impoverished refugees. Getchell and Riggs had already identified a promising site for a college campus at Vodena (later Edessa) to the west of Thessaloniki.73 George White must have been influenced as well by the judgment of Carl Compton, now a seasoned veteran of Near Eastern strife, who White hoped would assume a prominent role in Anatolia’s reestablishment. Following his departure from Merzifon in the summer of 1922, Compton wrote to Ernest Riggs, then associate secretary of the ABCFM’s foreign department, about the discouraging outlook for further missionary work in Turkey. In Compton’s view, the Turkish government had been antagonistic to the missions and had engaged in persistent perversion of justice toward Christians. “As far as my personal feeling goes, I would not be at

176

Chapter 4

all interested in trying to open any of the institutions as long as the present regime is in control.”74 Eager to return to the field, White, in the late summer of 1923, concluded his work in Minnesota for a second time. With the approval of ABCFM officials, he and Esther embarked for Thessaloniki. The American Board at this time was committed to continuing its work in Turkey, but its officers undoubtedly shared the reservations expressed by some of its most experienced emissaries. White’s thoughts now centered upon reconstituting Anatolia College in a new land. En route to Greece he was able to meet in Paris with the renowned statesman Eleftherios Venizelos. Though currently out of power, the champion of Greece’s recently failed venture to acquire the western portion of Asia Minor remained the country’s most prominent political figure. As White recounts in his memoir, Venizelos was most encouraging about Anatolia relocating to Greece and recommended Thessaloniki as the best location. He assured White of such assistance from the Greek state as land, water supply, and exemption from customs duties and taxes. He also provided him with a letter of introduction to Anastasios Adossides, former Governor General of Macedonia.75 White found Thessaloniki in “chaotic condition,” owing largely to its inundation by destitute and homeless refugees. He immediately began to survey the prospects for starting a school. That fall he consulted with officials in Athens who gave him verbal assurance that he might begin classes. A former casino to the east of the city that could be adapted to academic purposes was available for rental. There was no question about student demand for instruction, though payment was another matter. Equipped with these minimal assets, White requested trustee permission to commence. The telegraphic reply, reflecting the trustees’ uncertainty, was equally minimal: “Proceed plan temporary interim school.” Though tentative in the extreme, that response proved to be the turning point for Anatolia‘s relocation from Asia to Europe. Classes began at the preparatory level with thirteen students on January 23, 1924, at the renovated casino in the neighborhood of Harilaou.76 One question that cannot be ignored before closing the story of Anatolia College in Turkey is what became of its students who were, after all, the reason for the school’s existence. No wholly satisfactory answer can be given because of the paucity of information amid the chaos that engulfed the Christians of Asia Minor. Approximately twenty-four hundred young men enrolled between 1886 and 1916. Some of those, particularly from the earlier classes, perhaps about 10 percent, would have completed their lives in Turkey or abroad and died largely of natural causes before the Great War. Many more were surely caught up in the violence between 1914 and 1923 and either fled Turkey or perished. The figures cited for



The Great War and Its Aftermath (1914–1923)

177

loss of life among Armenians in Asia Minor vary significantly but are all harrowing. Roughly half of Anatolia’s graduates were Armenian. Losses among the Greeks of Asia Minor were lower but still alarming. In both cases, they were significantly greater among young males. A related question is whether attending Anatolia conferred any particular advantage for facing the extraordinary dangers that descended upon all Armenians and Greeks in Asia Minor or, possibly, entailed some special liability. As regards the latter, there seems to be no reason to suppose that having studied at Anatolia increased anyone’s susceptibility to harm, excepting the victims of the Amasia trials in 1921. On the other hand, a significant number of graduates, equipped with foreign languages and pre-professional training, were able to launch careers abroad. Some outstanding examples were noted in chapter 3. Many more individual cases could be cited of alumni who made new beginnings in Greece, the United States, Lebanon, Egypt, and Europe, though exact numbers are not ascertainable. Those many former students who were inducted into the Ottoman military forces or the related labor battalions reportedly received harsh treatment, which not a few failed to survive. A smaller number found their way into opposing armies and presumably fared better. George White recorded that more than forty served in the U.S. military during World War I. A handful continued their studies at Anatolia after its reestablishment in Thessaloniki. Another few were among the orphans evacuated from Samsun in 1922 and relocated abroad, though only a few names are recorded. Some Anatolians must surely have joined the migration to the small Armenian republic that was later swallowed up by the Soviet Union. One former student, Anastas Lazarides, who had become an evangelical teacher in the Ordu (Kotioro) area on the Black Sea coast, helped lead a group of Protestant Greeks to a new settlement at Azanta in the Caucasus. One of the happier biographies from this time was that of Haralambos Sideropoulos. Following studies at Anatolia (1889–1890) and the Evangelical School in Smyrna, he studied medicine at the University of Athens before returning to practice at his home in Ordu, which had the largest evangelical community in the Pontus region and where he was elected mayor in 1911 during the brief period of democratic reforms. Drafted into the Turkish army during the war, he was assigned to the hospital at Merzifon where, following the armistice of 1918, he assumed management of the Greek orphanage. Sideropoulos was among those Pontus Greeks condemned to capital punishment by the Kemalist military tribunal at Amasia in 1921, though in absentia. Somehow he managed to avoid arrest and found his way to Greece, where he directed a British-founded orphanage in the Macedonian town of Veroia (Berea). Later he settled at

178

Chapter 4

Katerini, fifty miles southeast of Thessaloniki with its newly established refugee community and the largest evangelical church group in Greece. Active in church and community, he served as mayor of Katerini in 1945 and lived into his mid-nineties. A different route drew Christos Theologos Papadopoulos, who graduated from Anatolia in 1893 and the Marsovan Theological Seminary two years later. After serving as pastor of the Protestant Church of Thyatira (Akhisar), he departed with his family for the United States where he founded the first Greek Protestant church in Chicago in about 1907. Two graduates from the 1914 class managed, after the war, to continue their studies in medical science at the Syrian Protestant College (renamed the American University of Beirut in 1920), a favorite institution for Anatolia alumni. Christos Mouradoglou served five years in the Turkish army during the war; after receiving his master’s degree from Beirut he developed his own pharmacy in Suez, Egypt. His classmate, Vasilis K. Kyriakou, took his degree in dental surgery and opened a successful practice in Port Said. Another remarkable odyssey was that of Charilaos G. Lagoudakis, who entered Anatolia in 1911 at age twelve. Though the war interrupted his studies, he managed to reach the United States and complete his higher education there. In the 1930s he traveled to Greece and became a history teacher at Athens College before returning to the United States just before World War II. There he applied his language skills and history training to government service, becoming for many years the leading expert on Greek affairs in the State Department’s intelligence service (INR). Though one could cite other individual instances, the fate of Anatolia’s student body from Merzifon cannot be ascertained with any great accuracy. It is even harder to account for Girls School students, who, unlike the boys, are not listed in most of the College’s annual catalogues. Besides changing their names with marriage, many were vulnerable at this troubled time to forced marriages and religious conversions.77

Building that housed the ABCFM’s first seminary in the Ottoman Empire at Bebek near Constantinople, 1840–1862. Courtesy of Franklin Trask Library, Andover Newton Theological School.

Anatolia College and Marsovan viewed from the north.

Contrasting views of Anatolia campus at Marsovan.

Charles Chapin Tracy, Anatolia’s first president.

President Tracy with first Anatolia graduating class, 1887.

American staff at Anatolia in mid-1890s, Charles and Myra Tracy in second row, right; George and Esther White in rear row, right, Edward Riggs in rear row, center.

President Tracy reading new national constitution to assembled students and townspeople at Main Hall, 1909.

Ottoman imperial decree (firman) of 1899 legitimizing Anatolia’s operation.

Girls School graduating class of 1905. Principal Charlotte Willard in center.

Anatolia staff and their families and friends on the Marsovan campus, c. 1910.

“Self-Help” workshop.

Students at the Martha A. King Memorial School for the Deaf.

Nurses and patients at the Anatolia hospital.

The geographic range from which Anatolia drew its students. Source: Missionary Herald, Vol. CVIII (Boston, 1912), 134.

New hospital buildings completed in 1914, with staff.

Anatolia Greek students’ football team. Simeon Ananiades, first left in second row, was executed by Turkish officials in 1921.

Christian orphans cared for by Anatolia personnel.

George White in NER officer’s uniform with teacher Donald M. Hosford in Merzifon, 1919.

Anatolia staff, 1920, George and Esther White in first row, center; Ruth Compton, first row, third from right; Carl Compton in third row, second from right.

Athanasios Aghnides, 1908 alumnus who became Director of Disarmament for the League of Nations; Greece’s Ambassador to Great Britain; and Greek delegate to the founding of the United Nations. Courtesy of United Nations Archive at Geneva.

5

} New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

S

THESSALONIKI IN 1923

ituated on the northern extremity of the Aegean Sea, the city known to most of the world at that time as “Salonica” occupies an intermediary zone between the Mediterranean and the Balkans, geographically, culturally, and historically. As one proceeds northward through the narrow Vale of Tempe, the gateway to Macedonia connecting Thessaly’s plains to the foothills of Mt. Olympus, there is a feeling of passage from the Mediterranean world with its pastel harbors, glistening islands, and citrus and olive groves to the heavier fringes of continental Europe, with Thessaloniki as the major point of entry. The city’s location linked classical maritime trading routes with river valleys leading northward to the Danube and lower Europe. Its east-west axis bestrode the overland corridor still known by its Roman name, Via Egnatia, reaching from the Adriatic coast to Byzantium and its Asian hinterland. This strategic site had ensured the city’s prominence over two millennia, by contrast to more renowned centers—Athens first comes to mind—which for entire centuries remained in relative obscurity. Founded (c. 316 b.c.) in the era of the Macedonian kings, its name means “Victory in Thessaly,” commemorating an early episode in the series of conquests that eventually swept the Eastern world under Alexander the Great. The city shares its name with the daughter of Philip of Macedon, Alexander’s half-sister. Thessaloniki became a major regional center of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires. The Apostle Paul’s visit and his Epistles to the Thessalonians made it one of the landmarks of the early 179

180

Chapter 5

Christian movement. Events from its dramatic past included the city’s defense against Slav invaders who penetrated the region from the sixth century; its sacking in the early tenth century by Saracen corsairs based on Crete, who reportedly slew or enslaved fifty thousand of its inhabitants; its seizure by Latin Crusaders who, forgetting that their professed goal was to restore Christianity to the Holy Land, made Thessaloniki the capital of a Frankish kingdom that lasted for only nineteen years (1204–1223); its brief rule by Venice (1423–1430); and its conquest by the Ottomans in 1430, twenty-three years before the fall of Constantinople. These and countless other dramatic happenings were woven into the inhabitants’ sense of the city and its past, embroidered with rival interpretations and myths.1 During the long eras of Byzantine and Ottoman rule, Thessaloniki and Izmir (Smyrna) vied for the rank of second city after the unquestioned primacy of Constantinople. Whereas Izmir on the Aegean Sea’s eastern coast served as the outlet for the productive river valleys of western Asia Minor, Thessaloniki performed a similar function for the southern Balkans. From the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the city shared in the quickened economic pace experienced by many ports in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Seas. Seawalls that had protected the city in an earlier age were demolished, opening the waterfront to the direct approach of vessels and to refreshing sea breezes. The tall flanking ramparts from Roman times that enclosed the city while connecting the harbor fortifications with the hilltop’s “Citadel of Seven Towers” were dismantled as Thessaloniki expanded during the last decades of Ottoman rule, though impressive remains are still to be seen today. New railway lines linked the city with Constantinople, Sofia, Belgrade, Vienna, and Paris. Since ancient times, a Jewish community had resided in Thessaloniki. Following the Sephardic migration from Spain in the late 1400s, it became the largest in the Ottoman Empire. Concentrated mainly near the harbor, below the citadel where leading Muslims resided, Jews undertook the full range of port operations, from mercantile management to stevedore functions. An early American missionary observed that “they hold their heads up as do their coreligionists in no other city of Europe.” Their vigorous commercial and banking activities expanded with new investments from France, Italy, and Austro-Hungary. The city’s population approached 150,000 as it entered the turbulent second decade of the twentieth century that was destined to reshape not only Thessaloniki but all of southeastern Europe.2 When George White arrived in 1923, Thessaloniki was just completing the latest of its many historical transitions. As a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, the city, after almost four centuries of Ottoman rule, joined the Greek state, which had won its independence more than eighty years



New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

181

earlier. It was now the second urban center of a country that after World War I had doubled its territory, despite its calamitous setback in Asia Minor, by acquiring parts of Macedonia, Thrace, and Epirus, as well as Crete and several Aegean islands. Thessaloniki’s first decade of liberation, however, had proved to be a time of continual convulsions. From 1915 until the end of 1918, the Allied Armies of the Orient used the city to mass forces for an assault against the Central Powers through the Balkans. Only toward the end of World War I did Allied units, including Greek troops, succeed in dislodging Bulgarian and Austro-German units from their entrenched positions along Greece’s northern border, thus contributing to the outcome of that vast conflict. In the meantime, Thessaloniki had been the scene of two major events. First, Eleftherios Venizelos, the dominant Greek political figure of that era, broke with the neutralist monarch, Constantine, by forming a rival government in Allied-occupied Thessaloniki in 1916. This led to the King’s abdication, Venizelos’s appointment as prime minister, and Greece’s entry into the war on the side of the Entente.3 The second event was a conflagration in 1917 that left 300 acres of the city a charred ruin, including most of the downtown commercial area and the main seafront. In total, 9,500 buildings were destroyed, rendering homeless as many as 70,000 people, mostly members of the Jewish community. An imaginative plan to reconstruct the city according to contemporary European design had been only partly implemented by the early 1920s, due to Greece’s political and financial setbacks in the years following the fire.4 These and other eruptions during that tumultuous decade produced another fundamental transformation in the society of Thessaloniki and northern Greece—namely, the ethnic and religious composition of its inhabitants. Although scholars disagree about the precise dimensions of the several national communities, given inexact data and the issue’s political volatility, it seems clear that Thessaloniki before the Balkan Wars was a polyglot amalgam. The Jewish majority of perhaps seventy-five thousand coexisted with large Greek and Muslim communities amid a host of other groups, including Albanians, Serbs, Vlachs, and Gypsies. Bulgarians composed a large segment of the population in outlying villages. The Balkan Wars began a long process of Hellenization that gained momentum following World War I. Those conflicts triggered the dissolution of the Muslim and Slav communities in Thessaloniki and its surrounding region. Tens of thousands fled the armies, first of the Balkan League and later of the Entente, their places taken by an influx largely of Greeks driven from war zones in the Balkan countries and Turkey. An agreement concluded between Greece and Bulgaria in 1919, the Treaty of Neuilly, provided for the mutual exchange of their nationals on a voluntary basis.

182

Chapter 5

About 53,000 Bulgarians are estimated to have left Greece, and 30,000 Greeks to have replaced them. Some tens of thousands of Slavic-language speakers still remained in the rural areas of northern Greece; in time, most of them either departed or assimilated to the newly predominant Greek culture. As regards the Jewish community, nearly half of its members exited Thessaloniki for foreign lands during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The stream of migrations became a torrent following the Greek-Turkish conflict of 1919 to 1922. The exchange of populations between the two countries formalized at Lausanne in 1923 was unprecedented in its scale and compulsory character. The result that George White beheld upon arriving in Thessaloniki later that year was a society whose Turkish and Slavic elements had largely disappeared. They were replaced by a larger influx of Greeks with some Armenians. Very few Muslims remained to adore the towering minarets that had survived the great fire but were soon to be leveled. Among those obliged to depart for Turkey were about fifteen thousand former Jews who had embraced Islam, known as “Donmes.” Except for its still significant Hebrew minority, Thessaloniki had become a vast Christian refugee camp.5 The transfer of peoples between the Balkans and Asia Minor was one of the cruelest consequences of the Great War because of its involuntary character and dimensions. It is estimated that over one and a third million individuals poured into Greece alone in the 1920s, the equivalent of a quarter of the country’s population at that time. Significantly, they were not distributed evenly throughout the country but concentrated chiefly in the northern provinces of Macedonia and Thrace. The main reason was the departure of about 450,000 Muslims and Bulgarians, mostly farming families, from those same territories, frequently referred to as “New Greece.” Incoming refugees occupied vacated lands, though their numbers were far greater than those of the departed. To confront the formidable task of relocating hundreds of thousands of homeless people as productively as possible, the newly formed League of Nations established the Refugee Settlement Commission (RSC) in 1923. Its work was funded by international loans to the Greek government bearing the League’s guarantee. The RSC’s main task was to distribute properties, mostly agricultural, vacated by departed owners or otherwise made available by the government, to new settlers and to provide them with development loans.6 Beyond the statistics, the harrowing experiences of uprooted families forced by war or international accords to abandon their ancestral homes and trek for days and weeks over mud-filled tracks and through diseaseridden marshes for unknown destinations have become embedded in the collective memory of the Greek people. Some sense of those ordeals



New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

183

reached the American public through the dispatches of a young war correspondent, Ernest Hemingway, who described the long march of Greeks fleeing from eastern Thrace in 1922 in a series of articles for the Toronto Daily Star. The National Geographic Magazine, a powerful influence by virtue of its vivid photographs, captured visually that heartrending plight of refugee columns plodding westward after the Greek defeat. Far less note was taken by the Western media of the flow of displaced Muslims heading in the opposite direction. Refugees also arrived in Greece by ship, “loaded to capacity with human freight, contagious diseases spreading in their holds, and thousands upon thousands of outcasts famished and frantic for water.” In Thessaloniki in 1924 as many as 160,000 homeless people, with more arriving, occupied thirty-five separate camps, a breeding ground for epidemics. The proportion of women and children was unnaturally high because of the heavy losses of men during the long hostilities. Despite noble efforts by the Greek government and relief agencies, during the winter of 1924–1925 many were reported to be starving.7 For George White and his small band of colleagues, the spectacle of a torched city surrounded by impoverished refugee camps must have been disheartening. However, they had known as bad, or worse, at Merzifon where their students and co-workers were slain or exiled, the Christian population banished, and their life work rejected by the country’s new rulers. Steeled by adversity, they perceived in Thessaloniki’s hapless migrants a new call for Christian benevolence. Uprooted Greeks from provincial Asia Minor were now concentrated more in the Thessaloniki area than in any other location, together with many Armenians and including even some former Anatolia College students. Their need for schooling was greater than ever. As White wrote to Anatolia’s trustees: “In spite of impoverishment, bereavement and exile, the people plan and plead for the education of their boys.” In the postwar distress of Greek Macedonia, Anatolia College found its new mission.8 White could take courage from the presence of a number of compatriots as well as Europeans drawn to the task of rendering assistance at this trying time. The American Red Cross had first come to complement the Greek government’s efforts to provide food and medical care. NER had taken over that cause in June 1923 and now concentrated its efforts on aiding the refugees, especially orphans. Dr. Jesse Marden, White’s close colleague in Merzifon, oversaw NER’s medical work from Athens. Heading the RSC, also based in Athens, was the former U.S. ambassador to Turkey (1913–1916), Henry Morgenthau, who had been an ardent supporter of the missionaries during the first dark days of the Great War. In Thessaloniki, in addition to the American Board’s mission station, its school for homeless young refugees, and the American Farm School, a number of relief agencies operated. A branch of the YMCA serving Allied

184

Chapter 5

servicemen continued after the war for civilian benefit. British Quakers had founded a Friends’ Center to provide health care and employment. The American Women’s Hospitals undertook medical work for refugees, including a hospital, clinics, and nursing school. No less important for this new undertaking, Thessaloniki was the site of a U.S. Consulate.9 But while those kindred organizations, with their American and European personnel, provided moral and perhaps some tangible support, White encountered from the outset a host of obstacles to reestablishing Anatolia in Greece. Many of these related to physical and financial resources. Anatolia had left a thirty-seven-acre campus in Merzifon, much of it recently constructed. In Greece, it owned no property. Most of its operating budget in Turkey had been funded by tuition and boarding fees. What hope was there of penurious refugees, or even the local population, being able to make similar payments under postwar conditions? The trustees in Boston, to be sure, held some funds on Anatolia’s account. But those assets were far from sufficient to finance a new campus or even sustain operations in rented quarters for very long. In any event, it was by no means certain that the trustees were in full accord about Anatolia planting permanent roots in Thessaloniki. They had authorized only an ad interim school, “to continue possibly three years, pending the selection of a new location for Anatolia College.” There were divided opinions within the mission establishment about the feasibility, and even desirability, of reconstituting the institution in Greece. There was also doubt as to whether a foreign missionary school would be allowed to operate under Greek law. Initial contacts with local officials were encouraging, but no permit had been granted. Moreover, it was uncertain what Anatolia’s legal status might be and whether its degrees would be recognized.10 Yet another concern arose about the proposed location. Thessaloniki, with its large population, port and rail facilities, and other cosmopolitan features, posed many advantages but also one serious problem: malaria. Rising from the vast marshlands extending from the Axios (Vardar) and Strymon (Struma) river valleys west and east of the city where the anopheles mosquito bred unchecked, the disease had forced ABCFM missionaries to abandon their attempt to found a station there in the midnineteenth century. The region had remained outside the main missionary sphere until the 1890s. Only recently, malaria had taken a heavy toll on Allied forces deployed there. At one point, a fifth of the British troops were hospitalized, while thousands of French and British soldiers had to be shipped home. Newcomers, lacking the acquired immunities that to some extent protected the domestic population, were especially vulnerable. Tuberculosis, smallpox, typhus, but particularly malaria, decimated the undernourished and vulnerable refugees. The RSC estimated in 1928 that four out of every ten refugee schoolchildren suffered from chronic



New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

185

malaria. The newly arrived Americans felt its effects, including Rev. and Mrs. Brewster and Susan Getchell. Esther White was so seriously afflicted that George White doubted at one point that they could remain. It was understood from the outset, therefore, that the initial location at Harilaou in the humid lowlands could be only temporary until a more healthful site was secured. These and other uncertainties loomed before the missionary team as the school welcomed its first class in January 1924.11 Anatolia’s future depended heavily upon the discretion of its trustees in Boston. Only if they authorized its relocation, allowed the use of assets held in its name, and agreed to pursue further funding in the United States could the College entertain hopes of flourishing anew in Greece. The Board addressed the issue at its October 1924 meeting where Theodore Riggs, a member of Anatolia’s staff visiting from Thessaloniki, summarized the situation on behalf of President White. It agreed to consider the College’s relocation to the Thessaloniki region, provided the president and Board of Managers could submit a convincing plan that met three “prerequisites”: permission from the Greek government; endorsement by the American Board’s Western Turkey Mission; and a campus site in a healthful location “free from the malarial conditions prevailing in the city of Salonica,” with abundant water and other conditions “favorable to the ultimate development of a large institution and settlement.” These conditions, more daunting than might be supposed, require further elucidation.12 AN AMERICAN PROTESTANT COLLEGE IN GREECE? It could not be readily assumed that a missionary institution would be welcome in Greece, given the Orthodox Church’s past stance against Western evangelists. As seen in chapter 1, the handful of Americans who had endeavored to introduce Protestant teachings during the first years of Greece’s independence quickly withdrew after encountering prohibitions against proselytism. That early group happened to include Elias Riggs, grandfather of Ernest Riggs, now secretary of Anatolia’s Board of Trustees; his brother, Theodore; and Susan Riggs Getchell, serving with her husband, Dana, in Thessaloniki after leaving Merzifon. Laws against proselytism remained in effect as the Orthodox Church continued to stoutly oppose evangelistic overtures, to the missionaries’ frequently expressed indignation. Despite the many difficulties they had faced in Islamic Turkey, their presence there had been legalized; they considered it one of their most productive fields, in sharp contrast to their experience in Christian Greece.13 This paradox was vividly illustrated in Thessaloniki itself. When the mission station had been established there under Ottoman rule, it was

186

Chapter 5

overseen by the European Turkey Mission headquartered in Constantinople, whose major activities were in the Balkans, most notably in Bulgaria. Finding itself now under Greek sovereignty, its future was very uncertain. The station’s relationship with the Greek Church under Turkish rule had been distant at best. Resident missionary J. Riggs Brewster (yet another grandson of Elias Riggs), who began his mission career in Merzifon and had come to Thessaloniki in 1915, now joined the new school’s faculty. Rev. Brewster had earlier complained of prohibitions on the circulation of the Scriptures in the Greek vernacular. The Orthodox Church had long insisted upon the exclusive use of the authorized Septuagint translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew to Hellenistic Greek, which few outside the priesthood could comprehend. It sought to ban the Protestants’ rival versions of both the Old and New Testaments, which the Salonica station and its kindred agencies, the American and British Bible Societies, endeavored to distribute throughout Macedonia. George White himself, only a few years earlier and under very different circumstances, had sharply criticized the Greek prohibition in a Congregational Church publication.14 Given strict laws in Greece barring foreign proselytizers, the small evangelical movement there had developed in the last half of the nineteenth century mostly as an indigenous effort. It received only limited support from abroad in the form of personnel and funding, largely from Presbyterian sources. Its energetic Greek leader, Michael Kalopothakes, a graduate of Union Theological Seminary and an ordained Presbyterian minister, had sustained the movement in the face of strong opposition from the established Orthodox Church. Evangelical congregations were formed within independent Greece at Athens (1871), Volos, Ioanina, and Piraeus (1890), and in Ottoman-ruled Thessaloniki. The Protestants’ press begun by Kalopothakes produced a stream of Scriptures and religious tracts. The wave of postwar refugees from Asia Minor included exiled Evangelicals, who now founded churches in several Greek locations. Two of the largest congregations were in Thessaloniki and nearby Katerini. In 1923, the newcomers joined the indigenous Protestants in forming the Union of Greek Evangelical Churches, based in Athens. By their own estimate, the Greek Protestants numbered fifty-six hundred, with six appointed pastors and two itinerant evangelists. It is noteworthy that at least five of the six pastors had studied theology at the Merzifon Seminary.15 In recent years, the Greek public attitude toward religious dissidents had softened somewhat, though they were still regarded as pariahs by the Orthodox hierarchy, which succeeded in banning the circulation of unauthorized Bible translations under the national constitutions of 1911 and 1927. For George White, a major challenge was sustaining a close relationship with the evangelical communities without provoking the ire



New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

187

of the Orthodox Church and the Greek state against his proposed new educational initiative. Aside from religious obstacles, there were also political pitfalls to be avoided. Although the decade of successive wars had finally ended, the passions they excited still ran high. Greece had emerged a winner in terms of territory, but at a frightful human cost, especially after the Asia Minor tragedy. Moreover, it was certain that among Greece’s neighbors, Bulgaria, at least, nursed resentment against Hellenic rule over Macedonia and Thrace and sought opportunities to reverse that result. Greeks understandably felt insecure about their newly acquired provinces and were sensitive to any foreign activities seen to threaten their recently established sovereignty. As George White observed, foreign schools were often regarded as sources of political propaganda, particularly those of French and Italian sponsorship. Some suspicion focused upon American missionaries as well, who from 1894 had taken up residence in Thessaloniki for the purpose of gaining access to Slavic-language-speaking villagers in the hinterland. The American Board, considering its operation in Bulgaria, a branch of its Turkish missions, to be one of the most successful, had assigned to the Salonica station Bulgarian-speaking personnel with prior service in that country. By deliberately refraining from evangelical initiatives toward Greeks, so as not to rival the work already under way there by Rev. Kalopothakes’s Athens-based organization, the missionaries in Thessaloniki became even more closely identified with Bulgarians. After hostilities between Greece and Bulgaria in 1913 and again in 1917, Americans speaking Bulgarian or exhibiting a favorable disposition toward that country became objects of mistrust by Greek authorities, as an incident in Thessaloniki demonstrated.16 In February 1919, shortly after the armistices ending the Great War, the Greek commander in Thessaloniki, General Paraskevopoulos, arrested three missionaries, Rev. John Henry House, director of the American Farm School, Rev. William P. Clarke, and Rev. William C. Cooper, on charges of harboring pro-Bulgarian designs hostile to Greece. It required the intervention of U.S. Consul George Horton (later to gain fame as consul in Smyrna during its seizure by Mustapha Kemal) to secure their release. In his report to the State Department on the incident, Horton remarked that, although he did not believe the missionaries were engaged in any “political plottings,” the Greeks viewed all missionaries in the Near East as proBulgarian, adding that “there is much to confirm this point of view.” He advised, for the avoidance of diplomatic friction and for the good of the missionaries themselves, that all those with Bulgarian experience or other connections with that country be transferred elsewhere and replaced “by people more clearly indicated for work in Greece.” It would take them a long time “to gain the sympathy and confidence of the Greek authorities,

188

Chapter 5

if, indeed, they ever succeed in this.” Horton added that among the resident missionaries, Rev. and Mrs. J. Riggs Brewster and Charles L. House (son of John Henry) had not aroused suspicions in Greek political circles and could continue to work profitably in Thessaloniki. In fact, most of the twenty-seven outstations administered from Thessaloniki were now located beyond Greece’s new frontier, in Serbia and Bulgaria. Still, it was only in 1922, one year before George White’s arrival, that the ABCFM finally decided that political considerations required the Thessaloniki station to sever its administrative connection with Bulgaria and instead come under the supervision of the Western Turkey Mission.17 Other Greek concerns over what was perceived as misguided political activity by American missionaries was expressed the same year as the incident described above, though in a very different way. During the kaleidoscopic shifts in military fortunes and political reversals throughout the war years, the ABCFM in the United States, as well as its representatives abroad, often spoke out on events or endeavored to influence them, such as, for example, by sending observers to the Paris Peace Conference (see chapter 4). Reacting to allegations of missionary intervention judged to be harmful to Greece’s national interests, leaders of the independent Greek evangelical bodies in Greece and Turkey, while meeting in Athens to plan their later union, addressed a strong protest to the American Board in Boston. They cited missionary influence in preventing the United States from declaring war on Turkey and Bulgaria; in opposing Greek aspirations at the Paris Peace Conference; in defending Albanian and Bulgarian interests against those of Greece; and in preventing the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. Such interference had provoked new antipathy against evangelism in Greece precisely at the time when the traditional hostility toward Protestants was seen to be easing. Citing their desire to see “America’s influence for true religion and sound education” in the Near East upheld and enlarged, the Greek evangelicals urged their counterparts in Boston to direct their missionaries to “confine themselves strictly to religious, educational and social problems in the Near East,” and to leave politics alone. Whether or not the specific criticisms of the Greek evangelicals were accurate and fair, they were voiced by that small element of Greek society most positively inclined to the American missionary movement. Among those signing the petition was Rev. Aristidis E. Mihitsopoulos, who had graduated from the seminary in Merzifon in 1903 and soon after became pastor of the evangelical church in Thessaloniki.18 George White, now in his early sixties, had always been a person of goodwill, sometimes, it seemed, to the point of naiveté. This characteristic had not always served him well in Turkey when facing determined enemies of the Christian minorities and of the missionaries who sought



New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

189

to minister to them. The religious and political hurdles that he now faced in Greece, while in some ways daunting, were much less challenging than those that produced Anatolia’s closing in Turkey. It was a tribute to White’s personal faith and endurance that he persevered in resurrecting Anatolia in a new land after so many disappointments. He combined the instructive experience of those ordeals with a greater flexibility on religious issues than that shown by some of his fellow missionary educators. White was well equipped by his open sincerity to disarm apprehensions about the intentions of the recently arrived Americans. He insisted persuasively that Anatolia’s cause was to ameliorate the lives of refugees and other needy youth through education. He wrote to James Barton that the work in Thessaloniki was Christian but not proselytism, noting that the first students and faculty included no Greek Protestants.19 Profound changes had occurred in Greece after the Asia Minor disaster of 1922 put an end to its historic dream of reconstituting a larger Hellenic state to encompass all unredeemed Greeks—the famed “Megale Idea” (Great Idea). Exhausted and impoverished by war, the Greek state faced the overwhelming task of first keeping alive and then resettling the more than a million destitute victims of political miscalculation who now thronged to her shores. Despite valiant efforts, her financial means and public services were unequal to the many demands, including the provision of education for thousands of refugee children. About half the population was illiterate in the 1920s, by one estimate, with highest levels in the newly incorporated territories. Hence, the government gratefully welcomed the RSC and the several private services that proffered assistance, with American agencies in the forefront. Earlier concerns and disagreements were to a large extent eclipsed by this imperative need and the generous international response. An outstanding example was the YMCA, which had not been permitted to function in “Old Greece” because of its religious identification but became established in Thessaloniki during World War I. It won public confidence by wisely forming regional units under Greek boards of directors and securing the backing of the Orthodox Church. The Thessaloniki branch was especially effective in providing a variety of services to impoverished youth, financed jointly by the central government, the municipality, which provided a prime building site, and support from America. It was fortunate that the current Orthodox leader in Thessaloniki was Metropolitan Gennadios, a cleric of exceptional character who held his post for forty years (1912–1951). Gennadios became a close friend of the “Y” and even traveled to the United States to support its efforts. J. Riggs Brewster observed that Americans were finding doors opening to them by virtue of the practical Christianity displayed by their disinterested giving.20

190

Chapter 5

The Greek political world remained unsettled following the Asia Minor disaster. A military coup d’état led to the abdication of King Constantine, the establishment of a republic in 1924, and a series of unstable governments. George White found Greek officials sometimes to be inaccessible or unsure of the extent of their authority, but invariably friendly. It was not difficult to win their favor. After all, White and his small team were themselves victims of Greece’s nemesis, Turkey. In fact, their situation, as exiles, resembled that of the refugees whom they came to assist. White solicited the support of public figures from state and church, both in Thessaloniki and Athens. He found Bishop Gennadios “exceedingly friendly” when calling upon him to offer best wishes for Orthodox Easter. The Governor General of Macedonia, together with a representative of the Orthodox Bishopric, attended a graduation service for the separate Mission School at which White officiated in June 1924. The Thessaloniki City Planning Commission provided assistance in resolving property matters for the temporary campus in Harilaou.21 On the crucial issue of a permit to operate the school, White confronted Greek regulations requiring any private, foreign institution to have a Greek citizen as its responsible party. It was difficult to see how such an appointment could be compatible with a school of American character or prove attractive to supporters in the United States. Nevertheless, seeking to legitimize the ad interim school begun without any permit, President White, after consulting the U.S. minister in Athens, submitted an application to the Ministry of Education in early 1924. He engaged the assistance of Rev. Mihitsopoulos, pastor of the Thessaloniki Evangelical Church, trained in Merzifon and a Greek citizen, who signed the application. A request to the Ministry on White’s behalf by the Thessaloniki superintendent of education to waive the requirement for a Greek director met with a rebuff, and U.S. minister Atherton advised him not to press the matter. The school completed its first full year without official permission but also without any active challenge by the authorities, who seemed generally well disposed.22 With this issue still pending, when traveling to London in the winter of 1924–1925, White stopped in Geneva to seek the help of influential alumnus Athanasios Aghnides, assigned there to League of Nations headquarters, who had brought him into contact with Eleftherios Venizelos eighteen months earlier. Considering it a “labour of love” to promote the plan for reopening Anatolia, Aghnides requested of Venizelos, then residing in Paris, a letter endorsing White’s plan. Venizelos responded that if Aghnides knew “the persons that undertook this matter to be serious people, then I am prepared to grant the required recommendation,” and asked Aghnides to prepare a draft letter. Dated January 16, 1925, the letter read as follows:



New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

191

TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: I have great pleasure in recommending to you Dr. GEORGE E. WHITE, Principal of Anatolia College, which institution has now transferred its headquarters from Turkey to Salonica in consequence of the evacuation from Asia Minor of its Christian inhabitants. Owing to the recent devastating events that have taken place in the Near East and the consequent influx of refugees to Greece, an educational crisis has arisen, and I feel certain that all my fellow countrymen will welcome any movement organized to render assistance to these poor human victims, in order to ensure them and their children some opportunity of obtaining an education and of becoming thereby useful citizens to their country. In view of the above, and aware as we all are of the very excellent records held by Anatolia College, I feel it a very pleasant duty warmly and very heartily to recommend Dr. White and his work to the kindly consideration of all who might be interested in an educational movement in the Near East. (signed) E. K. Venizelos23

Venizelos, though not a member of the government at that time, was the leader of Greece’s largest political party, the Liberals, and unquestionably the country’s most influential figure. His endorsement surely carried great weight and could only be a boon to the College in its relations with the government. However, it was written too late to influence the permit actually awarded to Anatolia at that time. Earlier the same month, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education had approved “the continuation in Thessaloniki of the same type of private educational institution that had operated in Asia Minor under the name Anatolia College.” The school was authorized to offer four regular grades and one preparatory grade, in accordance with its application. It was obliged to comply with the nation’s laws and subject to supervision by the educational authorities. White had enlisted the assistance of the American Embassy in Athens, of RSC director Henry Morgenthau, and of other well-disposed Greeks and Americans to achieve this result. He reported to the trustees that the government had relaxed its legal requirements for foreign schools expressly to accommodate American institutions previously in Asia Minor. When the permit was formally presented by the superintendent of education for Macedonia at a public event attended by the American consul in Thessaloniki on February 2, 1925, the first of the three conditions stipulated by the trustees for authorizing Anatolia’s reestablishment in Greece had been met.24 RELEASE FROM TURKEY The trustees’ second condition for considering Anatolia’s relocation in the Thessaloniki area was the endorsement of the Western Turkey

192

Chapter 5

Mission. White soon discovered that the approval of his erstwhile colleagues proved more difficult to secure than that of the Greek authorities. As related in the preceding chapter, the mission enterprise in Turkey underwent a deep crisis following the violence of the war years, the expulsion of the surviving Christian communities, and new restrictions by the nationalist government. A number of veteran missionaries, such as White and Getchell, were effectively barred by the new regime; others, like Carl and Ruth Compton, concluded that further efforts in that country would be futile. Some portion of the American Board’s constituency in America also believed that efforts in Turkey should be suspended. Despite such reservations, the personnel of the Turkey Mission resolved unanimously to persevere, with full backing by the American Board. Reduced in number and working under severe strain with modest resources for the very survival of their century-old enterprise, it is not surprising that they entertained mixed views as to the best strategy. Some argued that the only feasible way to render assistance to the Turkish people under present circumstances was to strip their earlier mission of its proselytizing component so as to provide essentially secular and scientific education, inspired by Christian benevolence and emphasizing ethical values. Others viewed that course as abandonment of their sacred purpose, insisting that, with God’s help, they could ultimately lead Muslims to spiritual regeneration. Against that background of controversy about the future of missionary activity in Turkey, a poignant contest ensued over the future location and identity of Anatolia College.25 Charlotte Willard had resided in Merzifon since 1897, including the especially difficult war years. After the NER team arrived in 1919, she took extended leave to recover her health before returning in the summer of 1922, more than a year after Anatolia’s closing. She headed a reduced mission station, staffed entirely by women who were confined mostly to working with the female segment of the local Muslim society. It appears that Turkish authorities were more kindly disposed to foreign women than to their male counterparts, presumably seeing them as less of a threat. In any event, Willard had won the respect of a large segment of the local Muslim community. Much of her time was now taken up in maintaining and repairing the Anatolia campus. In the fall of 1923, Bertha Morley returned, as did Emma Zbinden, Swiss teacher and nurse. Morley had assumed the management of the Girls School when Willard left in 1919, then moved to Smyrna when the Anatolia institutions were closed in 1921. Following the Turkish occupation of that city, she joined the Mission School in Thessaloniki before accepting the call to return to Merzifon. With permission by local officials, the Girls School reopened in January 1924 with a handful of pupils at the elementary level and Bertha Morley as principal.26



New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

193

Committed to continuing the work in Merzifon, Willard and her small staff believed that Anatolia’s closure would be only temporary. When reopening the Girls School, they affirmed that the need for Anatolia’s revival was: expressed by people in all walks of life, especially the higher classes. They are apparently ready to pay for education. The opportunity, if unrestricted by government, seems boundless. . . . We believe there are great things coming for the Kingdom of God in this land, and that we are on the threshold of a great new era. We are sure there are many who seek the best education for their children, especially for the boys, and they turn to our American institutions for it. We think we have a chance to help the people in this time of change to realize that “righteousness exalteth a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people.” To leave now would be to close the door upon all this need and opportunity.

While the missionaries could not fully discern the government’s attitude, military officers and other officials were most friendly. They therefore considered it a “deplorable mistake” to sell the physical plant and move permanently and urged that any such decision be postponed.27 The issue of Anatolia’s relocation came before the Western Turkey Mission at its June 1924 meeting in Istanbul. White was advised by William Peet, now Mission chairman, not to attend because of the opposition his plans were likely to excite. However, other delegates from Thessaloniki presented his proposal that “the college corporation and all its available assets of every kind should be withdrawn from Marsovan,” adding that the American Board might want to consider developing some other form of education for boys there. Willard made the opposite case to the conferees. Anatolia had been founded for the education of the boys of Turkey, regardless of race and religion. Throughout its many years there, the time had been awaited when Muslim youth might benefit from its instruction. That time now seemed to be at hand. Removing the College to Greece would be seen as proof that it was not really committed to the education of Muslims. The very name, “Anatolia,” was an essential part of the issue. A firman had been granted in that name, which the nationalist government now recognized as legitimate authorization for the school to resume operation. While rejoicing in the new initiative in Thessaloniki on behalf of boys deported there from Turkey, Willard urged the Mission “to conserve the rights of boys’ educational work of the future in Merzifoun [sic], in the name, the government recognition, the buildings and property, and the accumulated funds of Anatolia College.” When relaying her presentation subsequently to James Barton in Boston, she emphasized that schoolwork for both boys and girls in Merzifon rested upon the

194

Chapter 5

firman issued to Anatolia. “We have nothing on which to stand if this is lost to us.”28 Willard’s arguments were assured of a sympathetic reception by most of the conference delegates who shared her concern for the necessary legitimacy and resources to continue their work in Turkey. They referred the matter to a committee which, in its report, noted that there appeared to be sufficient interest in Merzifon to support before long a boys school at the preparatory level that should see steady growth. The committee concluded that the time had not yet arrived for a final decision by Anatolia’s trustees as to the disposal of the College’s property and funds, but recommended that its name and permit remain in Merzifon and not be used elsewhere. If and when the trustees did decide to establish a college in another country, the American Board was to secure the land, buildings, and movable equipment and provide funding for the continued work of Anatolia College at Merzifon. The committee’s report was adopted by the Mission at that same conference.29 The Mission’s resolution could only be a disappointment to the Americans in Thessaloniki intent on building a new college there. Barton had earlier cautioned against pressing for permanent decisions. However, it was clear to White that Anatolia’s future lay in Greece. He wrote to Barton that few Americans had ever been more intimate with Turks than himself. “But it is not wise to quarrel with a fact. And Marsovan facts at present are stubborn.” It was in early October that the trustees laid down their three conditions for considering the College’s transfer to Thessaloniki, including the endorsement of the Western Turkey Mission. That same month, George and Esther White traveled to Istanbul, met with an ad interim committee of mission leaders, and persuaded them to modify the decision of the previous June. The committee assented to the permanent location of the new college in Greece but would not yield on the matter of its name or permit. The next and final hurdle for White was approval by Anatolia’s trustees.30 White arrived in Boston weeks in advance of the annual Board meeting of May 26, 1925, in order to confer with individual trustees and prepare for the deliberations about Anatolia’s future. Strengthening his case were recent letters from the Greek Foreign Minister and Prime Minister endorsing Anatolia’s relocation to Thessaloniki. The main arguments White presented on behalf of the Board of Managers in Thessaloniki were as follows: •  It was to be hoped that the American Board would maintain a good school in Marsovan for Turkish boys, at the elementary and vocational levels; but an institution like Anatolia College, international in character and offering higher education, was now out of place there.



New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

195

•  As many as 1,400,000 Greeks and 100,000 Armenians had been driven from Asia Minor into Greece. The ad interim school in Thessaloniki was the only American Board institution easily accessible for young Greek and Armenian men. Twelve Anatolia teachers, Armenian, Greek, and Turkish, had lost their lives in Marsovan. “We dare not and we cannot abandon Armenians and Greeks, or exclude them from a share in the redemptive blood which was shed in Marsovan.” •  For many decades the American Board had sought to enter Greece, but was denied admission. Now the Greeks themselves had opened the doors and “welcome our non-sectarian, broadly tolerant, and truly Christian American education.” The Greek government had changed its laws regarding foreign schools for the express purpose of receiving American institutions previously in Asia Minor and had now issued a special permit for the College. •  There were now about as many Evangelical Christians in the Thessaloniki field as there had ever been in the Marsovan region. Anatolia, which had started many young men toward the ministry, continued to be needed as a feeder institution for theological studies leading to the pastorate. However, the primary focus of Anatolia’s future educational mission should rather be the preparation of leaders who could exert “a widening influence” across a broad social and professional spectrum. •  Enrollment in the ad interim school had risen from under sixty the previous spring to 150 during the second and current school year, with another hundred refused for lack of space. It was reasonable to expect an early increase to five hundred students when new facilities were ready. The people of Greece and the Balkans wanted American education and were “willing to pay for it.” •  An able teaching staff was now in place, with favorable prospects for expanding it to meet the needs of a rising enrollment. •  A promising site for a new campus outside Thessaloniki had been identified at a malaria-free altitude, and the Greek prime minister had promised to make a free grant of it. A large portion of a building fund was already secured or pledged, while the potential for drawing donor support for a school with such a compelling mission was great. White concluded his case by citing the Turkey Mission’s assent of the previous October and urged the trustees to authorize a permanent college to be located on the new site in the hills above Thessaloniki.31 Although White had been alerted in advance to skepticism on the part of some trustees about a permanent withdrawal from Turkey and an en-

196

Chapter 5

tire rebuilding of the enterprise in Greece, his proposals, after extensive discussion, received a unanimous vote of approval. The College’s bylaws, adopted in 1913 and revised in 1922, were now amended to read: “The purpose of the corporation is to maintain an institution in Greece for Christian education.” When confronting the divisive matter of its title, about which the missionaries in Turkey had expressed such strong views, the trustees temporized by directing that the term “American College” be encouraged as a popular usage rather than “Anatolia College,” “with a view to later legally changing the name of the College to serve better the interests of the institution in Greece.” The Board also resolved to communicate to “the American ladies in Merzifoun [sic]” its appreciation for their care of the College property and interests there, and its hope that education for Turkish boys would soon be in progress. Other issues concerning the status of property in Merzifon and funding the new college were assigned to special committees. George White remarked that at the end of the meeting, “I never was so tired in my life.” The major uncertainty over Anatolia’s future was now resolved.32 George White’s perseverance and persuasiveness, together with the initial success of the new venture in Thessaloniki, was surely crucial for swaying the trustees. Another important factor was the active support of James Barton, who had rejoined Anatolia’s Board the previous year. Secretary of the American Board and head of NER, he was one of the most influential figures in missionary circles. For many years he and White had conducted regular correspondence. It had been Barton’s judgment, forwarded from the Conference at Lausanne two years earlier, that White and Getchell should not challenge Turkish opposition to their returning to Merzifon. Barton now took the lead in persuading his fellow trustees of the soundness of White’s plan and personally headed an initiative to secure funds for buildings and an endowment for Anatolia.33 The Board of Trustees that turned Anatolia toward Greece in 1925 differed from the College’s earlier overseers in a way that was surely significant for that outcome. Like certain other institutions under ABCFM sponsorship, it had been governed by a board whose membership, in accordance with its 1894 act of incorporation, was identical to that of the Prudential Committee, ABCFM’s executive organ. This meant that Anatolia’s trustees exercised the same responsibility for several other institutions, whereas their primary concern was advancing the general work of the ABCFM. As a consequence, they played more a fiduciary role for Anatolia than an entrepreneurial one. Charles Tracy had lamented the lack of a dedicated board that could pursue the College’s interests in the United States. George White had echoed those same sentiments when contrasting Anatolia’s passiveness, particularly in fundraising, with other



New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

197

American Board institutions, as well as independent schools, such as Robert College, that had their own separate boards (see chapter 3). During the turbulent war years, more pressing matters preoccupied Anatolia’s leadership until 1921 when the issue again arose but in a new context. Dana Getchell, after returning to the United States from Merzifon, was approached by H. H. Johnson, an attorney for the Charles M. Hall Educational Fund. Johnson had met George White and Jesse Marden on their way back to Turkey with the NER in 1919 and had been greatly impressed by their devotion to humanitarian causes in the Near East. He informed Getchell that the Hall Fund, endowed by the estate of an Oberlin graduate and entrepreneur, and which assisted several institutions in the United States and abroad, was prepared to make a major donation of $50,000 to Anatolia. However, the grant would depend upon the College meeting a single condition. The terms of the Hall Fund’s distributions excluded their use for teaching theology. Therefore, Anatolia would be required to have a separate Board of Trustees not identical to the American Board’s Prudential Committee, though members of that committee might continue to sit on it. In reporting the matter to White in Merzifon, Getchell noted, “We often talked about a separate Board of Trustees, with the hope that if such could be organized the College could more easily be put onto a substantial financial basis.” When White returned to the United States, he quickly addressed the issue, drafting a set of amendments to Anatolia’s 1894 charter of incorporation from the commonwealth of Massachusetts. With the American Board’s cooperation, the charter was officially amended in March 1922, making Anatolia’s Board of Trustees a self-perpetuating body of between nine and eighteen members. The College remained under American Board auspices, a majority of the trustees continuing for many years to be drawn from the Prudential Committee, and it received some funding from the Board. However, individuals from a wider circle began to join as trustees soon after the change was effected, such as Dr. Albert Shaw of New York, a leading NER official. By the time the trustees faced the decision about Anatolia’s relocation from Merzifon to Thessaloniki three years later, they had become at least somewhat accustomed to acting as a body expressly dedicated to Anatolia College’s interests, even if those interests might be seen by some members of the missionary community as diverging from evangelical objectives in Turkey.34 There was yet another significant issue that was tacitly resolved by the trustee decision to make the school in Thessaloniki permanent. The College would not in the future pursue evangelistic objectives, however favorably inclined to them its leaders might be. Anatolia’s commitment from that time to essentially secular education is nowhere explicit in the trustees’ recorded resolutions but must surely have been addressed during their

198

Chapter 5

deliberations, for it is implied in George White’s recommendations. He informed the trustees that Greece now welcomed the missionaries “with a changed method of service which is already accepted in Boston,” referring, presumably, to the new limitations on religious instruction under which mission schools in Turkey were obliged to operate. Three times in his recommendations he used the term “non-sectarian.” White really had little choice; Anatolia could gain legitimacy from the Greek state only if it scrupulously avoided offending the Orthodox Church. There is little reason to suppose that White’s conscience was troubled by taking this direction. For years he had assisted Charles Tracy in modifying evangelistic aspects of schoolwork in Turkey and often signaled his own ecumenical outlook. As he confided to Barton in 1924, “Our work is Christian, but not proselytizing.” But he had to select his language carefully when petitioning the trustees, most of them still members of the ABCFM’s Prudential Committee.35 The soundness of White’s understanding of the preconditions for Anatolia’s establishment in Greece was illustrated by the American Board’s disappointment in its efforts to sustain theological training. Its three seminaries in Turkey at Merzifon, Harput, and Marash had closed with the war and the removal of the Christian populations from those regions. There had long been strong feeling within the missionary community that Istanbul was the most appropriate site for theological instruction. The turmoil of those years in provincial regions reinforced such sentiments, leading to the beginning of a school of religion there in 1922 with Rev. Ernest Pye, formerly of Merzifon, as dean. However, the Turkish triumph over Greek forces in Asia Minor that same year dictated another move to Athens in early 1923, with a section of the school remaining in Istanbul until its final closure by the nationalist government in 1925. In Athens, most of the students were refugees, the majority Armenians. However, the school ran afoul of opposition to religious teaching other than the sanctioned Orthodoxy, and was denied a permit. As a result, it closed in Athens, to merge with the Presbyterian Mission Seminary in Beirut as the Near East School of Theology. Its experience demonstrated the obstacles against religious-inspired foreign education in Greece and may be seen as justifying George White’s understanding that Anatolia must avoid giving offense in that regard.36 Subsequent events in Merzifon served to vindicate the judgment of the Whites, Getchells, Comptons, and others that conditions militated against further educational work there, however painful the abandonment of that long-standing mission field might be. Charlotte Willard with her small band of women persevered bravely in the face of government restrictions and weak response from the mostly Muslim population. In 1926, the American Board attempted to reassign a male missionary, Wal-



New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

199

ter Wiley, who had been a teacher at Anatolia in 1920–1921, but he was shortly expelled and the anticipated boys department failed to materialize. Bertha Morley took ill after her first year as principal and withdrew, later rejoining the Girls School in Thessaloniki. The school for girls continued at Merzifon under Ilse Pohl and later with Jeannette Odell as director. Its enrollment reached seventy at one point, but mostly hovered under fifty at the elementary and middle school levels. The government authorized the addition of a vocational division in 1928 but later ordered the closure of all primary schools operated by foreigners, leaving at Merzifon only a middle school that stressed homemaking and practical skills. State authorities exercised a heavy hand and were deterred at one point from seizing school property only by the intervention of the U.S. Embassy. An attempt to reopen the hospital in the mid-1920s was stillborn when the required permit was denied. Charlotte Willard retired in 1930 and died in the United States that same year. In the early 1930s, Dr. C. E. Clark reopened the clinic for a few years. The American Board, under financial strain during the Depression years, finally closed its Merzifon operation in 1938.37 Merzifon’s fate conformed to the general pattern of American Board schools as the nationalist government concentrated its efforts on developing a modern educational system, allowing little opportunity for foreign participation. Most mission schools either closed or relocated. Those that survived until the Depression years soon found their resources depleted, especially in small towns like Merzifon.38 ACQUIRING A HEALTHFUL CAMPUS According to local lore, following the Ottoman conquest of Thessaloniki in 1430, a troop of former castle guards petitioned the city’s new governor for permission to occupy lands beyond its southeastern walls. Out of respect for their demonstrated bravery, the request was granted, on the condition that they would undertake to guard the approaches to the city from that direction. Their settlement accordingly took the name “Kapoutzides,” the Greek rendering of the Turkish kapicilar, meaning “guards of the gate.” Subsequently, their descendants moved eastward to a higher location, probably to escape the fevers of the lowlands and be closer to summer pastures, although one account holds that they fled an infestation of venomous asps. In the 1920s the village was supported mainly by animal husbandry, viniculture, and the growing of okra. It was on the outskirts of Kapoutzides (later given the Greek name Pylea), an extended village of about three thousand inhabitants residing mostly in mud-brick homes, that a new campus was found for Anatolia.39

200

Chapter 5

When the trustees approved Anatolia’s permanent move to Greece in 1925, it was with the understanding that a satisfactory new location had already been identified on Mt. Hortiatis near the village of Arsakli, today Panorama, a favorite refuge for mission personnel escaping the heat of midsummer when malaria became most threatening. The site tentatively chosen on a rise called “Kara Tepe” (later “Analypsi”), Turkish for “Black Hill,” had been used by the British military as a sanitarium during the war. However, its distance from the city would pose a serious drawback for commuting students and faculty, especially in winter, given the altitude and rough road. The availability of water, a problem for much of the Thessaloniki area, was uncertain. In the spring of 1926, while walking from Kara Tepe down to Harilaou, still pondering the problem of a suitable site, George White and J. Riggs Brewster happened to notice a gently sloping area just above Kapoutzides. As described to the trustees in Boston, it was “shaped like a flat-iron, with roads on two sides converging to tip, and valley at the rear.” Upon further examination, it was found to better meet the College’s requirements. Though only half the distance from Thessaloniki than Arsakli was, it towered above the infected lowlands and had better access to water resources. It also afforded a splendid view of the city and the Thermaic Gulf, beyond which majestic Mt. Olympus was clearly visible on cloudless days.40 Consideration had been given to situating Anatolia in another part of Macedonia, away from its major city, in a location more like Merzifon. One place that seemed to fit that profile and also meet health requirements was Vodena (later Edessa), some forty miles to the west, where an American Women’s Hospital unit had treated Serbian refugees during the last months of World War I. However, George White recorded, its population at that time was largely Bulgarian, which could conceivably make it unsafe should political disturbances occur. More important in White’s view were the positive advantages of Thessaloniki: medical services; transportation facilities; many schools, churches, and cultural institutions; and an international flavor. Interestingly, these were the very opposites of the considerations that had led the missionaries to select Merzifon as the place for their schools sixty years before, reflecting the very different circumstances that Anatolia’s managers now encountered.41 White recalled that Eleftherios Venezelos had “virtually suggested” that the Greek state might make a site available without expense to the school. In fact, the government of Prime Minister Michalacopoulos gave written assurances in 1925 of free grants of public land or the expropriation of private property for the establishment of American educational institutions in Greece. How firm such promises were, given shifting political circumstances, was uncertain; in any event, White had reservations



New Beginnings in Thessaloniki, Greece (1923–1924)

201

about placing Anatolia under such obligations. The privately owned tract of land near Kapoutzides would have to be purchased.42 Property acquisition could be a complicated and protracted process. Moreover, controversy raged at this time over the allocation to Asia Minor refugees of farmland in northern Greece; clashes with local residents erupted in the very neighborhood envisioned for Anatolia’s new campus. The targeted eighteen acres consisted of five separate holdings, some with multiple owners. One parcel belonged to the Orthodox parish of Kapoutzides, which seemed unlikely to part with it readily. White assigned this complex transaction to John G. Racopoulos, a former student at Merzifon and the College’s first business manager in Thessaloniki. However, the president also drew upon his burgeoning friendship with Bishop Gennadios to secure permission to acquire the church-owned plot. Remarkably, the entire transfer was settled in a matter of months, and by the fall of 1926, the new site had been plowed and roughly fenced. White had written to the trustees that “there is a mountain just east of Salonica about as much above the sea as Ak Dagh was above the plain, and the Anatolia College seal and motto are as appropriate here as in Marsovan—the sun rising over a mountain, and the words ‘Morning Cometh.’” Following trustee approval for an architectural plan and construction of the first four buildings—once funding could be obtained—George White’s dream of resurrecting Anatolia in Greece gave promise of becoming a reality.43 But in the meantime, resources had to be marshaled, and there was an “interim school” in Harilaou to be managed.

6

} Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece The Interwar Years (1924–1940)

O

ver the centuries, Thessaloniki has impressed visitors by its striking location and abundant cultural heritage. For those arriving in the mid-1920s, the city’s Byzantine past was richly evident in the twenty-two Orthodox churches only recently reclaimed from their nearly five-century conversion to mosques. Most prominent were St. Dimitrios, bearing the name of the city’s patron saint, and Ayia Sophia, evoking the historic Orthodox edifice in Constantinople. Impressive as well were the substantial mansions built mainly by Jewish merchants and Turkish landowners along the seacoast southeast of the city. The White Tower, rising above the waterfront, served as the city’s emblem, its picturesque aspect belying its earlier name, “Tower of Blood,” when used as a prison during Turkish rule. But the most commanding sight was snow-capped Mt. Olympus some fifty miles across the Thermaic Gulf, clearly visible in those smogfree years. The military struggles of the previous decade had transformed Greece, nearly doubling its territory and population. The costs had been enormous: loss of life, an immense refugee influx, weakened state finances including a huge foreign debt, and internal political instability. With time these burdens would be largely overcome, and Greece would eventually ascend to a level of well-being scarcely imaginable in the 1920s. Thessaloniki shared the country’s fortunes, favorable and otherwise, during this era, but with a significant distinction. For almost two millennia the city had been a major administrative and commercial center for a succession of empires: Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman. Its location on the crossroads between the Greek peninsula and the Balkan provinces, 203

204

Chapter 6

and the east-west axis connecting Europe with Asia, underlay its longenduring prominence. However, the new boundary lines following the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) fell only some fifty miles north of the city, while to the east, Greece’s frontier with Turkey stopped short of the straits giving access from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and Russia’s southern provinces. Its traditional trade routes now conditional upon harmonious political relations with adjacent states, hence, problematic, Thessaloniki became boxed into a corner of the new Greece, deprived of the vast hinterland that had sustained its preeminence for centuries. This did not prevent it from experiencing future population growth, spurred in large part by demographic changes in later years that emptied the rural provinces, or from sharing in the country’s rising prosperity those same years. But the redrawn borders contributed significantly to its steady diminution relative to the capital in population, trade, and industry. Moreover, given the highly centralized character of the Greek state, Thessaloniki could not match the capital in political influence. It progressively became a distantsecond urban center after Athens-Pireaus. Another significant change was the progressive waning of its remarkable cosmopolitan profile through the departure or assimilation of its ethnic minorities. By the mid-twentieth century, Thessaloniki, for the first time in its long history, would become an essentially Greek city.1 The handful of American educators arriving to reestablish Anatolia College in another country and continent after years of strife would likely have fixed their attention on circumstances other than those described above. The settlement on the city’s far eastern fringes where George White found provisional quarters for the school had arisen from the exigencies of the recent war. White described the area as having been farmland before the French acquired it for a military hospital. After World War I, the property was sold to an investor, Harilaos, whose name stayed with the growing suburb. Anatolia was able to adapt to its needs a recently built casino put out of business by the departure of foreign officers. Surrounding the makeshift campus were acres of squatters’ huts housing refugees from Thrace and Asia Minor. A nearby encampment of exiled White Russians provided a convenient eating place for Anatolia students and teachers. The site was accessible from the last stop on the tramline from Thessaloniki.2 A REFUGEE STUDENT BODY George White’s strategic goals for his remaining years of service at Anatolia were to secure the College in its new setting on a sound legal and financial basis and prepare a permanent campus at the designated site



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

205

near Pylea village in the hills above Thessaloniki. However, the immediate concern claiming the attention of the small College staff was the sea of homeless, school-less, and destitute refugees. The year Anatolia resumed operation, 1924, happened to coincide with the severest phase of the refugee crisis. Dana Getchell, formerly at Anatolia in Merzifon and soon to rejoin its staff, working now with the American Relief Mission in Thessaloniki, described conditions to his colleagues in the United States: There is much slow starvation. One cannot walk through the refugee camps without seeing hundreds, whose pale, pinched faces show lack of nourishment. Such as these are in physical condition to catch any form of disease. Cabled words cannot describe the downright misery and terrible suffering that daily confront those of us who are in the midst of it.

White viewed the refugee youth thus: “Picked individuals among these lads are among the most hopeful and most needy people anywhere in the world.” He wrote to the Anatolia trustees, “If we can serve them in their critical need, there is the first fixed claim on our strength.” Accordingly, the first class at the new site in Harilaou, numbering fifty-seven boys by the end of that first abbreviated school year (January to June), was made up mostly of refugees recommended by NER personnel. Among the first enrollees were fourteen former Anatolia students from Merzifon. George White often referred to the reconstituted school as the “Pilgrim College.”3 The preponderance of refugees was women and children, especially those from Asia Minor where the Turkish government restricted the departure of Christian males of military age. Many were orphans evacuated by the NER, such as the hundreds whom the Comptons, Gertrude Anthony, and George Williams had sent out from Merzifon in 1922. Two American-sponsored orphanages now operated in Greece, one in Athens and the other on the Cycladic island of Syros. George D. White, son of Anatolia’s president, whose appointment to Merzifon in 1915 had been interrupted by the war, now directed the Syros refuge, the largest in Greece with as many as twenty-five children and widely praised for its high standards. Many of those entering Anatolia at this time required medical attention. Fortunately, the College could draw upon the services of the American Women’s Hospitals, one of the relief organizations that maintained a hospital in Thessaloniki. Its director, the well-known Dr. Ruth Parmalee, born in Turkey to missionary parents, made care available to needy students and initially served as Anatolia’s medical adviser. During these first uncertain years in Thessaloniki, Anatolia limited its enrollment to males, continuing the tradition from Merzifon, where the Girls School was formally separate from the College. To have enlarged

206

Chapter 6

the College’s scope at this time to admit female students would have added new challenges to an already formidable agenda. As we shall see, however, in only a few years Anatolia proved able to expand its operations to include girls.4 Displaced Armenians posed a special concern. The College had been closely linked to the Armenian community in Merzifon, where hundreds of local youths were its students while the faculty had included many Armenian educators. The tragic fate of that people could not but weigh heavily upon Anatolia’s leadership. In Thessaloniki a small Armenian community, generally well-established in middle-class occupations, had been part of the city’s cosmopolitan makeup. The new influx was of an entirely different ilk: thousands of mostly impoverished Armenians from diverse Ottoman territories, including many orphans. Their circumstances were even more dire than those of Greek refugees in that the Treaty of Lausanne regulating the population exchange made no specific provision for them. Though readily accepted by the Greek state, their legal status was uncertain, and few acquired citizenship. The country’s resources were overtaxed in struggling to accommodate the immense inflow of co-nationals. For most of the Armenians who took refuge in Greece, estimated at between fifty thousand and ninety thousand, it was a temporary solution before moving on to such areas as Egypt, France, and the United States, but particularly to the new Armenian republic in the Soviet Union.5 Though Armenians constituted a relatively small part of the refugee population in Thessaloniki, perhaps ten thousand, Armenian boys made up two-thirds of Anatolia’s first class in 1924. School records show that over half of those first students were orphans, with Anatolia or NER personnel acting as guardians. The small faculty included two Armenian instructors, Hakop Alotzian and Samuel Aroukian, who taught Armenian language, history, and mathematics in their native language. Armenian students distinguished themselves academically but also in extracurricular activities. For example, in 1927 they held most of the leadership positions in the English-language debate club (Ara Dildilian, president) and took first prizes for soccer and volleyball (Levon Baboulouzian). Several were elected president of their class, including Mikran Kolsouzian and Hovig Etyemezian. The Armenian student newspaper retained its Merzifon name, Nor Aik (New Dawn). The local community was invited to student productions of Armenian plays. In the first class to receive diplomas in 1926, nine of the fifteen recipients were Armenians. Most of those graduates had begun their studies in Merzifon and experienced horrific adventures before rejoining their classmates in Thessaloniki. Three among the group, two Armenians and one Greek, all orphans, were awarded scholarships for further study at Cornell University.6



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

207

The demand for admission by impoverished youths those first years was overwhelming. Limited facilities, but also financial stringencies, forced a hundred applicants to be turned away the first year. It was heartbreaking to have to deny entrance to appealing lads who submitted letters such as the following: Salonica, July 29, 1924 Honorable Dr. G. White Dear Sir, I am a defenseless orphan boy, and refugee from Adana to Smyrna and from Smyrna to Greece. Now I feel that I do not have any protector except you. I beseech you to help me. With a new hope, I come to you to solicit, that you might be my parent, pastor of my soul, and teacher of my instruction intellectual. Needy to your help, an orphan. Yervant Yahabedian7

George Yementzis ’32 recalled relations between Greek and Armenian students at Anatolia as close and friendly. He also remembered the arrival in the harbor of ships to take Armenian families away to the new Soviet republic of Armenia. The gradual relocation of the bulk of Armenian refugees was reflected in Anatolia’s enrollment. From at least about onethird of every class through the first seven to eight years, their numbers fell in the mid-1930s to less than a tenth. A contributing factor was undoubtedly Anatolia’s adopting a primarily Greek curriculum after 1930. Only a single Armenian enrolled in the 1936 preparatory class numbering twenty-two students, and the teaching of the Armenian language ceased after 1938. Armenian students continued to be a valued segment of the Anatolia student body but were few in number and came mostly from their largely Hellenized local community.8 The refugees eventually enriched Greek society by bringing new occupational skills, methods of cultivation and small industries such as textiles, carpets and silk production as well as their determination to reestablish their fortunes. But the task of absorbing them those first years, even after the influx of new arrivals slowed in the mid-1920s, was herculean. In Thessaloniki, fifty-six new settlements crudely formed on the city’s outskirts housed half of its population. Squalid refugee quarters remained for decades. For a large proportion of its students during these early years, Anatolia was not a “second home,” as boarding schools are often said to be, but their only home. It was the task of Anatolia’s teachers to help them develop qualities of mind and character so as to venture into the world with few other assets.9 Refugee children, whatever their ethnic backgrounds, shared the circumstance of being nearly destitute. In order to partially meet the expenses of education, residence, and meals, Anatolia resumed its

208

Chapter 6

Merzifon tradition of assigning students as many tasks as possible. SelfHelp employment encompassed gardening, building maintenance, minor construction, crafting furniture in the carpentry shop, and serving meals in the dining halls. Students thereby met a portion of their expenses, “besides helping to build their own school and their own manhood.” The College’s budget normally allotted financial aid to about one-third of the students, although the proportion ran higher those first years. A condition of assistance was always some form of employment.10 MEETING THE CHALLENGE The financial challenges that Anatolia’s leaders now assumed went far beyond supporting penniless students and, in fact, exceeded anything they had known. Their main task was to maintain stopgap quarters in low-lying Harilaou while building a permanent campus on the new site in Pylea. Time was of the essence because malaria was a constant threat, especially to newly arrived foreign staff. The means at hand were indeed modest. Anatolia had left an entire campus in Merzifon without receiving any compensation. Its endowment, currently about $150,000, was far from sufficient to both maintain the College and meet new construction costs. The sole solution was a concentrated fundraising operation in the United States for which the responsible party could only be Anatolia’s president.11 George White boldly embraced this challenge, although it entailed a major change in his role at Anatolia. Until then he had been an educational leader, entrusted by Charles Tracy in his last years to oversee Anatolia’s operation while the latter concentrated on renovating the Merzifon facilities. Now the responsibility for finding the means to construct a new campus fell squarely upon White’s shoulders. The tasks of identifying donors and soliciting funds were perhaps not his natural preferences, but under the circumstances there was little alternative. To pursue this immense task with any prospect of success would require Anatolia’s president to spend most of his time in the United States, a fundamental change for White. It also meant that he needed to assign the management of campus activities to a trusted associate. White had no hesitation about who that should be. He had conceived great esteem for the exceptional qualities of character demonstrated by Carl Compton during his service in Merzifon under the most difficult circumstances, not to mention Carl and Ruth’s heroic endeavors in Russia during the war, in Ankara with NER after leaving Merzifon in 1922, and, most recently, in managing a Turkish orphanage at Zinjidere in Caesaria province. Upon



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

209

departing from Turkey in 1924, the Comptons visited Thessaloniki, where White invited Carl to assume major responsibilities. Compton expressed in personal correspondence his strong loyalty to White, which had overcome serious reservations about returning to Turkey in 1920. He had no such hesitation now about joining Anatolia’s new venture in Thessaloniki. However, the death of his mother delayed his arrival to become Anatolia’s dean until March 1925. Carl Compton thus began his third period of service to the College (the second for Ruth), which lasted for over three decades and extended Anatolia’s remarkable line of inspired leadership from the years of the Tracys and the Whites.12 The immediate task facing President White, Dean Compton, and the other senior staff comprising the Board of Managers was to revive Anatolia’s outstanding features in a physical environment much inferior to that left behind in Merzifon. Given that the Harilaou site would serve only as an interim campus, the College could invest only minimally in its improvement. The greatest efforts were concentrated, therefore, on creating an educational ambience that would eclipse the modest, even shabby, facilities. The former casino, rented for three years and then purchased, became the center of the provisional campus and was designated Tracy Hall. Situated in a park-like quarter of Harilaou with acacia trees and gardens, it was of mediocre construction with thin plaster walls, but ample in size and serviceable. Its several alcoves were quickly partitioned to make eight classrooms adjacent to two rooms serving as administrative offices. There was space for a fair-sized assembly and study hall that quickly became the favorite place for student gatherings. Modest lodgings on the upper floor accommodated the Whites and three single teachers. Ruth Compton described the classroom furnishings in 1925 as “simple in the extreme. Chairs were the kind used in coffee houses, crude wooden frames with thatched seats.” They had cost the school only thirty-six cents apiece. Each student carried his own chair from class to class, with books attached under the seat. To accommodate approximately half the student body as boarders, a one-story shed from the former hospital was adapted for a dormitory, dining hall and small infirmary. Three other hospital wards housed the Self-Help work area for carpentry and mechanical tasks and laundry and maintenance needs. A donation from the British Bible Lands Mission Aid Society enabled the construction of a modest new dormitory appropriately named London Lodge and able to accommodate thirty-eight boys. As enrollment continued to grow, the College in 1926 purchased a large ten-room brick structure between the casino and the former hospital. After extensive repairs and remodeling, Iowa Quadrangle came to house

210

Chapter 6

eighty boarders as well as supervisors and provided dining facilities. The dormitory in the rented hospital now became reserved for younger boys and, as in Merzifon, was named the Home. London Lodge, later expanded and called the “Annex,” henceforth held mainly the library and science classrooms and laboratories. A residence for the Comptons was built nearby, while the athletic grounds completing the three-acre campus were designated Marathon Field. They came to include a 300-meter running track, football and baseball fields, and courts for basketball, volleyball, and tennis. Anatolia’s annual catalogues for these years stress the abundance of fresh, clean water. Nevertheless, a former student in the Home described the minimal facilities; he and his fellows were taken to a local hamam (public bath) once a week.13 If Anatolia’s Harilaou campus was strikingly humble by comparison to both its abandoned site in Turkey and its future quarters in Pylea, that circumstance would have been scarcely notable amid the squalor of Thessaloniki’s refugee camps and post-fire squatters’ huts. Far more important was the inspiration the small band of educators brought to the goal of reconstituting the College. Their task was rendered easier by enthusiastic students relieved to be out of danger and eager to learn. An alumnus recalls student elation following the announcement by President White of the gift of a piano to be installed in Tracy Hall.14 SEEKING A CURRICULUM Anatolia’s curriculum in Turkey had evolved while serving several priorities, which themselves changed over time: preparing graduates for theological studies, meeting practical needs for employment, satisfying American liberal arts standards, and complying with the Turkish state’s requirements. Its bachelor of arts degree was awarded to those relatively few students who opted to complete the full course of studies in order to enter the Merzifon Seminary or, more often, embark on postgraduate university studies, usually abroad. The great majority elected to depart earlier and apply their training to a variety of occupations, while Ottoman authorities formally recognized Anatolia only as a secondary school. There was uncertainty about the dimensions of the College’s academic offerings in Greece where the educational milieu was unfamiliar territory. Moreover, that territory itself was shifting as the government sought to introduce new reforms while gradually bringing schools in the newly acquired territories, such as Thessaloniki, into conformity with the statemandated system. Anatolia’s initial program of studies largely responded to the urgent need of its students to find work. This necessitated offering subjects of practical value, such as commercial arithmetic, stenography,



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

211

and bookkeeping, but also meeting official standards, given the highly regulated instructional and occupational environment. At the same time, the curriculum was intended to qualify graduates for higher studies abroad, particularly in the United States; hence its emphasis on Englishlanguage and liberal arts subjects. During its first tentative years in Harilaou, therefore, Anatolia endeavored to equip mostly uprooted youth, often with gaps in their preparation, for a variety of contingencies. It revised the curriculum periodically and awarded diplomas conferred by the Board of Managers with authorization of the trustees. The first four years were termed the “preparatory program,” followed by two additional years leading to the “Associate in Arts” degree. The course of study was intended to correspond to both the Greek “gymnasium” (high school) curriculum leading to university entrance and to the sophomore (second) year of the American four-year college. As such, it required two years fewer than in Marsovan; graduates now normally took their degrees in their late teens rather than early twenties. The first associate degrees (also termed “junior college” degrees) were awarded to fifteen refugee students in 1926, followed by an upgrading of the curriculum that delayed the next conferrals until 1928. Over the next five years (1929 through 1933), between twenty-two and thirty-seven graduates annually received Associate Diplomas that were not, however, recognized by the Greek state.15 With the founding of Greece’s second university in Thessaloniki in 1926, it became all the more imperative that Anatolia graduates be eligible to train for the major professions. Accordingly, the College extended its preparatory program by two years to conform to the Greek state’s expansion of the gymnasium in 1929 from four to six years. Obtaining official recognition of its secondary degrees proved to be a slow process. Only in 1931 did legislation authorize the Ministry of Education to acknowledge foreign schools as equivalent to the Greek six-year, private gymnasium, thereby entitling their graduates to apply for admission to the country’s universities. But a significant distinction between “private” and “public” high schools must be noted in this regard: students completing the former were required to take special state examinations administered by a committee including public school teachers in order to qualify for the apolitirion (diploma). Announcement of the Ministry’s decision extending recognition to Anatolia was made by the superintendent of education of Macedonia before a joyous gathering at the College’s June 1931 commencement exercises.16 In adapting to Greek educational and professional requirements, Anatolia found its options limited. It aspired to provide American-style, undergraduate university training in the liberal arts and in vocational fields, as it had done in Merzifon. Indeed, a business concentration in the last

212

Chapter 6

two years was offered briefly from 1929 to 1931. There was even discussion of introducing medical studies. Such designs, however, proved incompatible with Greek law according exclusivity to public institutions at the post-secondary level. Anatolia continued for many years to characterize its curriculum as that of a junior college, labeling its graduating class “Sophomores.” This was perhaps justified to some extent by the demanding Greek secondary curriculum from which qualified graduates entered directly into Greek and other European universities for professional studies, such as law and medicine, normally requiring four years of undergraduate preparation in the United States, as well as by Anatolia’s additional instruction in a few liberal arts and commercial subjects conducted in English. Moreover, Anatolia graduates going on to undergraduate studies at American universities were frequently admitted to the sophomore or even the junior (third) year. Accordingly, graduates received, in addition to the standard state apolitirion, a second diploma backed solely by Anatolia’s authority, verifying the completion of undergraduate-level courses in English. In reality, however, despite embellishing the state curriculum, Anatolia was now essentially relegated to the level of secondary studies. The term “college” became merely a part of its name rather than signifying any precise educational level. Once that reality was clearly perceived, Anatolia simply set out to become the finest high school in Greece.17 The consequences of Anatolia’s unavoidable conformity to the Greek state’s educational prescriptions went well beyond being restricted to high school–level studies, as significant as that was. It also meant adopting the secondary curriculum formulated by the Ministry of Education. Not surprisingly, that program differed considerably from the priorities of Anatolia’s American educators, both as regards designated subjects and their language and content. The state curriculum had been heavily influenced in its nineteenth-century evolution by German educational philosophy. It tended to be highly theoretical, prescribed a single textbook for most classes, and emphasized rote learning. The curriculum also bore the strong imprint of Greek cultural precepts and national ideals as the small state struggled to achieve a secure hold in a politically fractious part of the world. Consequently, Greek-language instruction, ancient and modern, Greek history, and Orthodox religion made up well over half of the official program of studies and was compulsory for all candidates seeking the standard diploma that also served as a prerequisite for university admission. When the required hours for French, Latin, and geography were added, the total came to about 70 percent of the prescribed curriculum. Moreover, Anatolia now came under direct supervision by the Ministry of Education. It was required to use prescribed textbooks for most classes



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

213

and was subject to close scrutiny to ensure conformity with standard practices.18 The heavily Greek curriculum restricted Anatolia’s ability to offer subjects corresponding to American education, most notably courses common to the first years of liberal arts colleges. It limited the hours available for English language and literature. Moreover, it virtually ruled out any prospect of accommodating other ethnic groups, as had been Anatolia’s practice in Turkey and during its first years in Greece, unless they were willing to follow a mostly Greek curriculum. This was seen as a disadvantage, particularly by Thessaloniki’s large Jewish community with its strong preference for the French language. Anatolia’s educators observed diminishing numbers of their non-Greek students year by year. In one effort to cope with these limitations, from 1930 the College required a preparatory year for the great majority of entering students lacking fluency in English, thereby extending its program of studies to seven years. It also endeavored to provide additional subjects and hours of study beyond the standard state program of thirty class periods per week. Anatolia’s concern to offer broader options to meet the needs of its various constituencies and also preserve features of American higher education was illustrated by its initiative in 1937 to introduce an alternative curriculum for the final two years. The “Free Studies” option was designed for students intending to undertake immediate employment in Greece or university studies abroad and who would not require the apolitirion. It was intended to appeal particularly to ethnic minorities and was taught largely in English. Subjects included sociology, economics, political science, applied logic, societal ethics, esthetics, and a variety of business courses. However, student response proved to be weak. In its second year the program enrolled only five students from the senior class and four juniors, among the latter, two Jewish lads and one Armenian. Those numbers were inadequate to justify the separate curriculum and so it was discontinued. In any event, the following year (1938) the Metaxas regime reordered the state curriculum, mandating a new eight-year secondary program. Anatolia complied by restructuring its classes accordingly, but only for two years until the Italian invasion and the onset of World War II.19 THE ROLE OF RELIGION At first glance, it might appear that the most telling departure from Anatolia’s traditional practices was in the teaching of religion. The principal reason for its founding in Asia Minor had been to prepare young men for the theological seminary and thereby win souls to the Protestant faith.

214

Chapter 6

In Merzifon, Orthodox, Gregorian, and even Muslim students followed daily Bible-reading sessions led by American teachers using Englishlanguage scriptural texts. During Anatolia’s first years in Thessaloniki its provisional curriculum saw religion, sometimes termed “Gospel,” taught in the first three or four years, usually one or two hours weekly. Rev. J. Riggs Brewster mostly undertook instruction using Protestant texts. However, the state curriculum adopted by Anatolia in 1931 mandated that Orthodox religion be taught in Greek two hours weekly throughout the six years of the gymnasium by certified teachers. If Anatolia’s graduates were to qualify for the state diploma, they would be required to complete the full curriculum, including Orthodox religion classes. Accordingly, beginning in 1931 only Greek teachers of religion were employed; Rev. Brewster was reassigned to new duties in Athens.20 It might seem that Anatolia had acquiesced in a reversal of its core principles in order to continue its operation in Greece. In fact, its religious aspect had undergone significant modification over the years. Both Charles Tracy and George White were first and foremost educators rather than proselytizers, by contrast with many of their missionary colleagues. The Seminary at Merzifon had become eclipsed by the College. White, in particular, was a leading advocate of essentially secular education, emphasizing practical instruction designed to promote both social and economic progress. It was with a clear conscience, therefore, that the president made the necessary compromises to preclude opposition from the Orthodox establishment in Anatolia’s new country, which then, as today, knew no separation between church, state, and education. Important steps in this direction included establishing close relations with Bishop Gennadios in Thessaloniki and with the Orthodox Archbishop Athanagoras in the United States. Probably nothing symbolized more convincingly Anatolia’s new orientation, and its increasing independence from missionary direction, than the appointment to its Board of Trustees in 1929 of the Orthodox Bishop of Boston, Ioachim Alexopoulos.21 White’s approach reflected the changing outlook among many American Protestants toward the evangelical calling. A more tolerant view of other religions was joined to an expanded vision of how enlightened Christians could improve human society in America and abroad. This more liberal conception of Christian education had taken hold particularly in a number of colleges founded as Protestant institutions. Prominent among them were the few Midwestern colleges, notably Grinnell, Oberlin, and Carleton, from which Anatolia drew much of its American personnel, both in Merzifon and Thessaloniki. The liberal arts culture emphasizing humanistic values and service to society had left its clear imprint upon George and Esther White, and no less upon Carl and Ruth Compton. Those ideals had taken root in Merzifon and now again in



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

215

Thessaloniki where these Grinnell graduates of successive generations undertook to reconstruct Anatolia in its new setting. They drew to their cause younger educators of similar training and persuasion. During Anatolia’s sixteen years in Thessaloniki before World War II, most of its American teachers and administrators had studied at liberal arts colleges, particularly Grinnell and Oberlin.22 The stance now taken by Anatolia was to create a broadly tolerant Christian environment that would neither offer offense to the Orthodox establishment nor be uncongenial to students from the Jewish community. Every school day began with “chapel,” consisting of a prayer, hymns, and usually a talk, only occasionally of a religious character, by a faculty member. Students were encouraged to attend weekend services at a place of worship of their own faith. Sunday evening vesper services were held for boarding students to which English-speaking friends were welcome. The intention was to infuse campus life with core Christian values without imposing any particular religious creed. Even more than in the past, emphasis came to be placed upon character building as the best means for instilling Christian principles.23 THE ANATOLIA SCHOOL SPIRIT With George and Esther White mostly absent in the United States seeking resources to build the new campus, Carl and Ruth Compton led these young and enthusiastic educators in creating a learning environment whose human vitality eclipsed its dingy physical setting. While there is no doubt of a close bond between George White and Carl Compton, or that they shared the same basic ethical values and educational outlook, their personalities seem to have differed significantly. Whereas White articulated his ideas widely by lectures and writings, Compton, reflecting perhaps his early Quaker upbringing, led more by example. He possessed the rare quality of inspiring trust and confidence in students and fellow teachers. In Merzifon, Anatolia had developed a distinct campus culture that went far beyond mere classroom instruction to embrace a broad range of ideals and pursuits. As the new Anatolia in Thessaloniki initially faced material impoverishment, its rich humanistic traditions therefore assumed even greater importance. With President White’s full backing, Carl Compton, dean, teacher, and coach, was the ideal figure to re-create Anatolia’s distinctive ethos, stressing fundamental virtues of honesty, hard work, social responsibility, manliness, and sportsmanship. The circumstance that half or more of the students were boarders during the first decade in Harilaou, many of them without parents, increased the influence of campus life on the formation of their characters.24

216

Chapter 6

Compton’s sincere and reassuring manner imparted confidence to both teachers and students. An able administrator and devoted teacher, his special gifts lay in sound judgment and unassailable character. Compton’s favorite vehicle for schooling young males in manly virtues was athletics. Graduates have recalled how his encouragement not only enhanced their athletic skills but also taught lessons of enduring value. Carl played with the students while also acting as referee, illustrating standards of fairness by blowing the whistle frequently against himself. The student yearbook described Dean Compton’s efforts: “He comes every day to the field and plays with the boys, teaching them how to gain vitality, encouraging new players, training the good players, and carrying on the ideal of sportsmanship.”25 It was largely through the dean’s influence that athletics assumed major importance in campus life. All students were expected to participate in sports every day after lessons and were encouraged to join teams for interclass and interscholastic meets. Soccer, volleyball, and track and field matches were organized with the few local schools that fielded teams, mostly the American Farm School, Constantinides School, the French Lyceum, and the Romanian high school. The interscholastic tournament involving those schools was one of the main events of the year. Another was Field Day, transplanted from Merzifon, when Anatolia’s teams performed before parents and guests. The Tennis Club enrolled seventy members in 1930, while bike racing and hiking were also favorite pursuits. However, it was basketball, coached by Compton, that became the outstanding athletic activity. It seems likely that Anatolia was the first school in Greece to introduce the sport, which meant in the early years that competing teams were few. Occasional matches could be held with Athens College, founded in the capital by Greeks and Americans shortly after Anatolia’s relocation in Greece. The trip to Athens by Anatolia basketball and soccer teams was one of the special events of the year. Compton’s sense of fairness and candor radiated from the playing courts, classrooms, and administrative offices throughout the student body. Dimitris Zannas ’38, later mayor of Thessaloniki and an Anatolia trustee, fondly recalled a valuable lesson from the dean. Dimitris and some friends skipped their first classes one spring morning to take a swim. Upon arriving late at school with salty hair, they were sent to the dean’s office to obtain slips excusing their tardiness. When Dimitris claimed a toothache and dentist visit, Carl Compton eyed him steadily and replied in a friendly way that he would issue the required slip because he was sure Dimitris would never betray his personal integrity. Dimitris never forgot the deep shame he and his friends felt in leaving the dean’s office and their abiding respect for Carl Compton. Many such



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

217

personal accounts by former students testify to the profound influence that Compton exercised, more by deed than by word, over more than three decades of service.26 By creating a rich variety of out-of-class pursuits, the College continued its Merzifon tradition of reproducing the salient features of campus life at selected American colleges. In Thessaloniki these so-called extracurricular activities took on even more importance because of the limitations imposed by the state-mandated curriculum, especially on the number of courses taught in English, and its rigid formalities. The broad menu of activities was designed in part to replicate at least some aspects of liberal education outside the classroom. To enable students to achieve greater English proficiency despite fewer classes now taught in that language, the faculty at this time introduced the “English-speaking Rule,” apparently proposed initially by the Student Council. Students were required to use only English outside of class and for most extracurricular activities. Penalties for violating the rule were minor and applied with flexibility. The rule’s effectiveness varied and was a common subject for articles, often humorous, in student publications. Its overall effect seems to have been to strengthen the Englishspeaking campus environment.27 Campus activities aspired to broaden the learning experience, especially in the arts, music, theater, and written and oral self-expression. As with the athletic teams, student committees elected by their peers took responsibility for organizing each endeavor, under the supervision of a faculty adviser. The objective was to develop qualities of leadership, initiative, and cooperation. The most popular associations included the English and Greek literary societies, the student journal, the chorus, the glee club, the orchestra, and the Student Christian Association. One of the most ambitious projects was the annual yearbook, The Anatolian, begun in Merzifon. It commenced again in 1928 to enable Anatolia students to “recall their Alma Mater regardless of what far corner of the world they may journey to.” Though faculty were involved largely in preparing the earlier issues, by 1932 the editor in chief, senior student George Yemenetzis, was able to assure readers that students had truly shouldered that year’s publication. Particular emphasis was given to philanthropy and the obligation to assist those in need. Members of the Student Christian Association, modeled after the YMCA, organized sports activities for refugee children from neighboring Harilaou. Professor Hadjikyriakos led the “Red Cross for Students” in organizing Greek-language church services for inmates of the Yedi Kale prison. Collections for worthy causes were common: in 1929 students raised or contributed 5,620 drachmas for flood victims.28

218

Chapter 6

STAFFING FOR THE FUTURE Assisting the Comptons to create a haven for the formation of mind and character in Harilaou was a small core of staff from Merzifon, joined by new colleagues. Among the former were Dana and Susan Getchell, who managed the Home for younger boarders, the same responsibility they had exercised in prewar Merzifon. William E. Hawkes was another seasoned hand who had managed an NER orphanage in Sivas, Turkey, during the difficult years of 1921–1922. After completing a theology degree at Hartford Seminary, he was assigned to Thessaloniki in 1923 to open a mission boys school but instead joined Anatolia’s team. Over the next dozen years Hawkes taught science, mathematics, and history; organized the school library; acted as registrar; oversaw the dormitory; and served on the Board of Managers. While taking leave to complete a master’s degree at Columbia University, he married Jessie Newgeon, an accomplished musician. In addition to training a student chorale and organizing recitals and holiday concerts, Mrs. Hawkes formed an orchestra in the 1930s that took the school’s music program to new heights.29 While absent in the United States seeking funds for the new campus, the president required a capable individual to organize its construction. His son, George D. White, had proven himself professionally as head of NER’s large orphanage on Syros Island for five years. Born in Merzifon, he followed in his father’s footsteps by graduating from Grinnell College in 1915 and again by marrying a Grinnell classmate, Elsie Hoesley. His subsequent appointment as tutor in Merzifon was interrupted by the war. In 1928 he again joined Anatolia’s staff as financial director and oversaw the preparation of the new Pylea campus. Elsie White undertook the challenging task of transforming the bare and arid site by planting trees and gardens.30 Another imperative need was for an experienced medical hand to oversee the health and well-being of the boarding students, given the rampant diseases in Thessaloniki at this time. Few of the missionary veterans could have matched the stirring personal history of Lillian Cole. Trained in nursing at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, she had entered missionary service in Asia Minor. Hers was the rare instance of an American missionary taking a local spouse. Levon H. Sewny, Anatolia graduate of 1901 who studied medicine at the University of Beirut, was an Armenian doctor who died of typhus while treating Ottoman troops during World War I. Assigned by the American Board to relief work with Armenian refugees in Egypt during the war, after her husband’s death Mrs. Sewny assisted at the NER orphanage in Zinjidere, Turkey, managed at that time (1923–1924) by the Comptons. Arriving in Thessaloniki in 1927 to serve



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

219

her late husband’s former school, she directed the small infirmary as well as residence and dining operations for a decade. Ruth Compton observed that she ruled with a rod of iron and a heart of gold. Her cardinal rule was that anyone pleading sickness would be put to bed with a dose of castor oil. As a result, no student made the mistake twice of pretending to be ill, leaving the infirmary’s beds mostly empty.31 As former personnel rallied to the Anatolia cause in Thessaloniki, the most unfortunate instance was the early death of Theodore Riggs, youngest son of Edward Riggs and brother of Susan Riggs Getchell and Ernest Riggs, Anatolia’s future president. Theodore had joined Anatolia in Merzifon as treasurer in 1919, and, upon the school’s closure there, came to Thessaloniki to work first with the American Farm School and then with Anatolia. While assisting Dr. White in the United States in the spring of 1925, he succumbed to influenza, leaving a widow and five children.32 Securing able and devoted teachers from the local community was no simple task during the school’s first years, given uncertainties about the composition of its student body, languages of instruction, and curriculum and religious dimensions. It soon became clear that the permanence of Anatolia’s Thessaloniki location, together with the strong Hellenic content of its curriculum, signified the need for a capable and committed Greek faculty. George White sought teachers who met the Greek state requirements, meaning a Greek university degree for those teaching Greeklanguage subjects, but who were also equipped by character and outlook to embrace Anatolia’s exceptional mission with its still strong Protestant overtones. For one appointment, he wrote fifty letters before finding the right individual. In view of the shifting circumstances of a nation undergoing profound changes in the 1920s, an educational system subject to frequent revisions, and Anatolia’s high aspirations, it is hardly surprising that the teaching staff registered many turnovers during the interwar period. From among the thirty-two Greek educators who undertook duties at Anatolia these years, six may be identified as key figures serving to anchor the faculty. Ioannis Papastavrou joined the College its first year, following the recommendation of the local Evangelical pastor, and became head of the Greek department. He was ably assisted by Savvas Deliyannides, the only faculty member to serve throughout those sixteen years, and by Lambros Pararas, who originated from Smyrna but received his higher education in Greece and joined Anatolia’s faculty in 1930. All three were graduates of the University of Athens, though Papastavrou also earned a Ph.D. from the University of Innsbruck. With his advanced qualifications and winning personality, he led the faculty while also traveling frequently to Athens to resolve issues with the Ministry of Education.

220

Chapter 6

The other half of this core group came with very different backgrounds as refugees who had acquired their education at American colleges in Turkey. Kyriakos Hatzikyriakos studied at International College in Smyrna, a leading missionary institution, before joining Anatolia’s staff to teach mathematics. Graduating from the same college, though a generation later (1923), Orestes Iatrides took a leave of absence from Anatolia to complete his training at Boston University, returning with a master’s degree to teach social studies. Rounding out this faculty nucleus was Vasilis Liatsos, who had studied at Robert College in Istanbul and from 1930 taught English and phonetics. All three brought the assets of Greek nationality, familiarity with American education, and English-language classroom skills. Yet another refugee was Prodromos Ebeoglou, from the town of Amasia, the site of the 1921 executions of Anatolians. When his studies at Merzifon were interrupted by the school’s closing, he remained for a time to assist Carl Compton, completing his Anatolia studies in Thessaloniki in 1926. After earning his bachelor’s degree from Boston University in 1933, he returned to a productive career at Anatolia as teacher, registrar, and later business manager. Four younger colleagues who were to have long careers at Anatolia commenced their service before World War II. George Vourdas was the first graduate of the newly founded University of Thessaloniki to join Anatolia’s faculty, teaching Greek and Latin. The same year (1936) Lambros Papadimitriou, who had studied at the University of Athens, was appointed to the mathematics division. George Paralis (1938) was to become a much-admired local painter while teaching visual arts. Responsibility for delivering instruction in Orthodox religion was challenging both for a school of Protestant background and for the teacher assigned that task. Ideally, the instructor would be able to deliver the essential messages of Orthodoxy in a way congenial to Anatolia’s principles while also contributing to students’ ethical growth. Following the adoption of the state curriculum in 1931 and the departure of Rev. Brewster, a series of short-term appointments concluded with the selection in 1935 of Rev. Matheos Hadjimatheou from the nearby town of Naousa, who had received his university degree from Athens University. Byron Antoniades ’40 recalls how Hadjimatheou was able to convey the essence of the Orthodox faith without excessive reliance upon standard textbooks and to win the affection of his students.33 While relying upon its Greek staff to deliver the curriculum’s Hellenic dimensions, the College continued its Merzifon tradition of employing young American college graduates as tutors. They brought energy and enthusiasm, fresh liberal arts experience, and an eagerness to instruct students only a few years their junior. Their term of service was normally three years. Not speaking Greek and residing in the student dorms distant



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

221

from the city, their lives tended to be concentrated within the school. They readily bonded with their students and spurred their motivation to learn and use English. For these young Americans, an appointment to Anatolia offered an exotic overseas experience and usually a first encounter with the teaching profession. They not only taught most of the English classes and acted as dormitory monitors but also guided the all-important student activities. This proved to be an effective and economical means for the College to create the desired liberal arts college environment. James W. Abel (1931–1934), an Indiana University graduate, recalling the “minimally adequate” living conditions, characterized the facilities as “Spartan.” The modest accommodations were equipped with netting to ward off malaria-bearing mosquitoes. A hot bath was available on Saturdays.34 Approximately thirty young Americans accepted this challenge in the interwar years. The quality of these junior teachers appears to have been of a high order, judging from their subsequent careers in education, science, and business. To be sure, service in this still unsettled part of the world could be hazardous. Hunter Mead arrived in Thessaloniki in 1931 to complete his overseas assignment after being ejected from a missionary school in Turkey. While teaching English at the International College in Izmir, he had inadvertently created a stir when reprimanding pupils for cheating. Indignant parents prompted the authorities to threaten legal action and the implicated teacher was quickly transferred to Greece. More regrettable, two young American teachers succumbed to illness and did not survive their Anatolia teaching experience.35 Taking up mentoring responsibilities in a foreign culture amid postwar turmoil could be a heavy burden for young adults, as recorded by one teacher who later became a widely known author. Rollo May joined Anatolia’s staff in 1930 after completing undergraduate studies at Oberlin College. Though he quickly bonded with his students, unfamiliar social customs and the austere setting seem to have triggered a psychological crisis, possibly aggravated by malaria. After being relieved of school duties for a time, he recovered, resumed his teaching duties and later forged a brilliant career in psychology and philosophy. May describes his formative Anatolia experience in My Quest for Beauty (1983).36 Despite the very real hazards, most of Anatolia’s young teachers seemed to thrive on their experience, and several developed lifelong ties with the school. Three subsequently became trustees: Curtis Lamb sat on the Board for several years, while John F. Chapman and Everett W. Stephens served as successive Board chairmen for nearly two decades (1959–1978). Young tutors aided the senior staff in nourishing student morale and creating a stimulating learning environment. They acted as class advisers and oversaw the rich variety of campus activities. For instance, the 1930

222

Chapter 6

student yearbook, The Anatolian, warmly thanked Curtis Lamb for helping launch its publication, for leading the school choir in its performance of Bach chorales at vespers and holiday concerts, and for coaching tennis; and thanked Harold Graves for acting as senior class adviser, directing the student production of Sophocles’ Antigone, and instructing the student debating teams. The debate topic that year was: “Resolved, that we shall have frequent socials with the girls of the Girls School.” Paradoxically, the exchange was won by the negative side, who later hastened to assure fellow students that their true preferences were contrary to their assigned roles in the debate! The Aurora monthly magazine aspired to be both an English-language literary journal and a commentary on student life, with American teachers as advisers. Its fare ranged from discourses on war and peace to tales of mischief in the dorms. A student from the 1930s recalls how James Abel played the piano and introduced his boys to American jazz; in class he had the habit of throwing chalk at inattentive students. Given their inexperience, young American teachers relied heavily upon the direction of senior staff, but their contribution to the revival of Anatolia in Greece was substantial.37 ANATOLIA ACQUIRES A GIRLS SCHOOL The profound shifts in Thessaloniki’s ethnic profile resulting from the Balkan Wars, World War I, and the subsequent confrontation between Greece and Turkey were reflected in the city’s educational offerings. Before the decade that saw those turbulent events, a variety of schools had served the city’s several religious and linguistic communities. Turkish, Greek, and Jewish schools were the most numerous, though there were many foreign-sponsored academies as well. These included several of French patronage, with Italy and most of the Balkan countries also represented. One estimate shows a total of eighty-six schools serving thirteen ethnic groups in 1907–1908. The postwar Hellenization of the region radically altered this configuration. Schools with departed or now alien sponsors either closed or adapted to the mandated Greek educational model. One scholar of this period characterized the consequences for the city’s schools of the radical changes in its ethnic composition: “The diversity which marked at least the final centuries of the city’s Ottoman period has been replaced by an absolute homogeneity.” This was perhaps something of an exaggeration, but not too far from the truth. Contributing significantly to the process of cultural uniformity was legislation that required all Greek citizens, irrespective of their linguistic preference, to attend Greek-language primary schools, and that



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

223

limited the operation of foreign schools to the secondary level. A German high school operated, but with a primarily Greek curriculum. French continued to be the most commonly taught foreign language. It was favored especially by the Jewish community, whose educated families largely spoke French and preferred to send their teenage children to the French Lyceum or the Italian School, both of which taught French as well as Greek. Considering the substantial size of the Jewish community, it is noteworthy that relatively few of its youth, particularly males, elected to attend Anatolia during the prewar years. English lagged behind other major European languages in the preferences of the Thessaloniki public. It must be kept in mind that only a small percentage of the country’s youth could afford secondary education of any form during these difficult years, least of all at private schools charging tuition.38 One response to the uprooting of peoples in southeastern Europe had been the founding of an elementary school in 1912 for displaced children from the Balkan Wars by the Women’s Board of Missions of the Interior, an adjunct of the ABCFM. Housed in modest quarters in downtown Thessaloniki, it was directed, beginning in 1919, by Lena L. Lietzau and Grace M. Elliott. It responded to Anatolia’s relocation to Thessaloniki by electing to become exclusively a girls school, with some of its former male students continuing their studies at the College. As the wartime turbulence subsided and its original mission waned, the school sought to include older girls and to enroll both Greek and foreign refugee youth. These moves were seen by the Greek authorities to exceed the intent of its original permit. In ordering its closure, they were evidently disinclined to allow a Protestant mission school to operate with a Greek clientele. A solution, however, was found by bringing the school under Anatolia’s management. This proved feasible by virtue of the 1922 amendment to Anatolia’s charter that had made its Board of Trustees formally independent of the ABCFM, hence rendering it no longer, strictly speaking, a missionary institution. That same amendment had also authorized the College to extend its educational services to young women.39 By way of further explanation, in Merzifon the complex of institutions that came to be known as “Anatolia” included the Girls School, which for practical purposes functioned as an appendage of the College. But in fact it had a separate status legally and educationally. The Girls School came under the supervision of the Western Turkey Mission rather than ABCFM’s Prudential Committee that oversaw Anatolia; its academic offerings were very different and it did not award the bachelor’s degree; its diplomas did not qualify for recognition by the Turkish state at the secondary level as did those of the College. In Thessaloniki, also, there were differences initially in the status and operation of the Girls School.

224

Chapter 6

However, these were overcome before the end of the prewar period so as to make it a fully equal partner in the newly evolving Anatolia College. The first step in that direction was the inclusion of the Girls School in Anatolia’s operating license in 1927. It now came under the official management of the College, its principal serving on Anatolia’s Board of Managers. There seems to be little doubt that George White’s success in winning the support of Greek officials and disabusing them of any misgivings about Anatolia harboring offensive evangelical objectives contributed to this outcome. In approving these measures, the trustees at the same time authorized the appointment of “a lady” to its Board in Boston, with the expectation that others would follow. Mabel E. Emerson, secretary of the ABCFM, who had visited Thessaloniki in 1925 and was a strong advocate for the Girls School, became Anatolia’s first female trustee.40 Before joining Anatolia, the Girls School had moved to a more appealing site on the bay to the east of the city less than a mile from the Harilaou campus. The former mansion of a high Turkish official in the Allatini neighborhood had been acquired by the Standard Oil Company for its senior personnel before being purchased by the ABCFM. While less than ideal for a school, its elegant décor with verandas, fireplaces, and walnut paneling compared well with the crude Harilaou campus and allowed for adaptation to the needs of the small but growing enrollment, including a boarding unit in the attic. In 1930 it was expanded to include four additional classrooms and a large study hall that also served as an auditorium seating up to three hundred. A high gate opened into the fenced courtyard. Bertha Morley, veteran missionary educator, was appointed principal in 1929. She had experienced Anatolia’s trials in Merzifon during her three assignments beginning in the prewar years and concluding with the Girls School’s reopening there in 1923, when she succeeded Charlotte Willard as principal. Morley had adopted and provided education for thirty-four Armenian orphans, some of whom she brought to the United States. Her fourth appointment to Anatolia, now in Thessaloniki, was to continue until World War II closed the College.41 The school’s academic status was given official recognition in 1931 under the new educational law as equivalent to the Greek “Higher Girls’ School.” However, its program of studies and diploma were not yet the equal of the College’s. It offered the standard four-year curriculum prescribed by the state for girls not intending to prepare for university studies and was designed “to be harmonious with the female nature, the tasks and mission of the Greek mother.” After completing a six-year primary school, applicants were tested in mathematics for admission and in English for placement. The school required most beginning students to de-



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

225

velop their English-language skills through a preparatory year. As in the case of the boys college, refugee children and orphans comprised a sizable portion of its student body during the 1920s, declining sharply after the early 1930s. In succeeding years, the Girls School was often described as a “finishing school.” Its students tended to come from leading Greek, Jewish, and Armenian families of Thessaloniki or nearby provincial towns, with the expectation of an education to prepare them for respectable marriage and motherhood.42 Financial strains, however, caused uncertainty as to whether the Girls School could survive. Income from tuition was far from equal to expenses. Although the school had been included in Anatolia’s license in order to legitimize its presence in Greece, operationally it continued to be subordinate to the Near East Mission of the ABCFM, while now coming under the governance of that Board’s Prudential Committee as Anatolia had before 1922. With difficulty, the ABCFM continued to meet most of the expenses not covered by tuition. The school’s finances became so strained during the Depression years that the Prudential Committee approved its continuation only on a year-to-year basis and on condition that Anatolia would agree to assume full responsibility by 1937; otherwise it would be closed. Anatolia’s trustees as well as its managers in Thessaloniki expressed concerns about their ability to meet that challenge. Nevertheless, the trustees agreed in 1933 to provide annual increases in financial support with the objective of taking full responsibility for the school by 1937, when indeed it became the Women’s Department of Anatolia College.43 One factor influencing this decision was the assistance by a group of Congregational Church women in Chicago who rallied to George White’s appeal. During the financially difficult 1930s, this cohort of supporters contributed about one-fifth of the Girls School’s annual budget. Their efforts were bolstered by Mary S. Hill (later Mrs. James Surpless), a Carleton College graduate who had come to teach in the Girls School in the late 1920s. After returning to Chicago, she joined the Anatolia Board as its youngest trustee, continuing to exercise that responsibility for over forty years. Mary Hill Surpless was an outstanding example of the bonding of young American teachers with Anatolia that redounded to the school’s long-term benefit. Another was the Nollen sisters, Sara and Hanna, Grinnell graduates and experienced teachers, who taught at Anatolia and the Girls School from 1928 to 1932. Daughters of a Grinnell College president who was also an Anatolia trustee, they became long-term contributors to Anatolia’s scholarships.44 Only in 1938 did the Girls School receive permission from the Ministry of Education to introduce the “classical gymnasium,” whose diploma was required for all those seeking admission to Greek universities. Thereupon, it began to phase out the “Higher Girls’ School” in favor of the new

226

Chapter 6

gymnasium curriculum. However, war erupted before that transition could be completed; hence, no gymnasium degrees were awarded at that time. A different initiative that proved popular was the “general studies” program, mostly in English, for high school graduates who did not intend to enter Greek universities. It drew graduates from other schools as well as those finishing Anatolia’s “Higher Girls’ School” for a three-year curriculum mostly in English. Modeled on the American liberal arts formula, it paralleled the two-year option offered briefly by the Anatolia boys division, but proved more successful in drawing participants. Given these enhancements of its offerings, enrollment rose in the last years before the war to about one hundred and sixty.45 A rich campus culture flourished in the ornate halls lining the shore of the Thermaic Gulf. Beyond the required lessons, activities designed to develop character and personal skills filled the school day: athletics, theater, chorale, public speaking, and written exposition, among others. The Christian Efforts Club undertook local welfare projects, such as distributing food, clothing, and blankets to destitute families and orphanages. Its members brought orphan children to the school for reading sessions and morale building. Relations between the Anatolia Girls and Boys Schools were distant, given the physical separation of their campuses and also prevailing social mores. Rare occasions for older students’ mixing arose from a few shared activities such as the Anatolia and Aurora publications, the college yearbook, and seasonal celebrations.46 ERECTING A NEW CAMPUS While Bertha Morley, Carl Compton, and their faculties labored to sustain educational communities at Allatini and Harilaou, George White concentrated his efforts on financing and erecting a new campus to equal the lost site in Merzifon and serve Anatolia for decades to come. He engaged the formidable task of amassing funds for a new physical plant with two strong advantages. First, he had gained experience in fundraising while working for the NER during the war and again in 1922–1923. In those years, he had built a base in the Midwest centered in Minnesota and established a wide range of contacts in the surrounding region. Second, as noted earlier, the Anatolia Board of Trustees in 1922 had become independent of the Prudential Committee of the ABCFM, which oversaw several institutions, and was now able to concentrate its efforts on building the College’s resources. If the president could gain the active involvement of individual trustees, particularly those based in financial centers such as New York and Boston, prospects for meeting the College’s needs would be much brighter.



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

227

White’s financial strategy during the last decade of his Anatolia career was to keep the interim college at Harilaou functioning respectably, but at the least possible cost, while securing funds for a new campus in Pylea. Anatolia’s operating budget in these years ranged from about $30,000 to $55,000 annually, varying with enrollment, the dollar/drachma exchange rate, and fluctuating costs. Of that amount, less than half was provided by tuition and other income in Greece. The remainder had to be found in America, together with funds for the new campus. Stateside support included income from Anatolia’s endowment, which amounted to $122,000 in 1927, salary grants from the ABCFM, and donations from friends and supporters.47 From a rented office in Minneapolis, White reactivated his contacts throughout the major cities of the Midwest, drawing particularly upon Congregational Church figures and former mission supporters. Since the task was more than one person could undertake, and given the need to return with Esther to campus every spring to oversee administrative developments and officiate at commencement, he employed an assistant to the president for promotion. William J. Shallcross had served the NER as fundraiser in the same region. The projected goal was $250,000 for the building fund, more than twice the current endowment. This was indeed an ambitious target, particularly given the onset of the Great Depression. Fortunately, several of Anatolia’s trustees rose to the occasion. The greatest boost to Anatolia’s finances resulted from initiatives by trustees James Barton of ABCFM and NER fame and Dr. Albert Shaw of New York in petitioning the Charles M. Hall Estate for a major grant. It will be recalled that it was in order to comply with conditions set by this charitable fund that Anatolia in 1922 formed an independent board of trustees. The Hall Estate now agreed to make a new grant of $275,000 to Anatolia’s endowment, by far the largest gift ever received, as well as $25,000 for campus construction. The latter donation served also to meet a matching challenge set by trustee John L. Grandin in Boston, enabling the College to embark with confidence upon the first phase of construction on the new campus. By 1930 Anatolia’s endowment exceeded the $400,000 mark, while its Building Fund had reached over $100,000.48 Tireless in his endeavors to win new friends for Anatolia, White extended its range of supporters by traveling as far as the Pacific Northwest to seek out loyal alumni and other advocates. A particularly receptive body in Boston was the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA) composed of admiring Greek Americans. Another was the board of the then defunct Apostolic Institute of Konia in Turkey, which from its endowment bestowed an annual sum upon Anatolia, as did the former Euphrates College. Later, the International College of Smyrna also aided Anatolia after its operation in Turkey closed in 1937.

228

Chapter 6

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace made a substantial grant for the College’s expanding library. It had been earlier strengthened by the donation of some five hundred volumes by Mrs. Margaret Garrison Phoutrides, widow of Aristides Phoutrides, former professor at Harvard University. Probably the most unusual product of White’s wideranging initiatives was the gift of a farm in Kidder County, North Dakota, from which the College received one quarter of the crop as rental income. But the greatest act of benevolence, after the Hall Fund contributions, was a bequest in the amount of $96,000, a vast sum at that time, by George Nicholas, a Greek American born in Turkey whose assistance had been enlisted by former Merzifon professor J. P. Xenides.49 One issue defying easy resolution pertained to claims on the campus property in Merzifon, where Anatolia had abandoned involuntarily some forty buildings constructed over more than half a century. This complex matter posed a host of legal issues involving not only Anatolia’s Board but also the ABCFM and the U.S. and Turkish governments. In the summer of 1926, Carl and Ruth Compton traveled to Merzifon to dispose of some of the movable property. A variety of equipment had been left there, due in part to the hurried departure from the campus, but also so as not to convey negative signals about intentions to return. The Comptons shipped a collection of volumes from the library and other items to Thessaloniki and auctioned off some materials locally, but left substantial equipment for the school still operating on the Merzifon campus. They also left intact the prized museum collection of local flora and fauna as well as items of archeological interest. Expectations of some indemnity from the Turkish state preoccupied Anatolia throughout these years. Ernest Riggs, secretary of Anatolia’s Board, undertook efforts to resolve the matter. He found that the Ankara government had requisitioned some of the buildings and imposed taxes on others. To cope with financial straits during the Depression, the ABCFM demolished some campus structures to reduce upkeep and taxes, sold the hospital compound to the Turkish Defense Ministry, and gradually liquidated its holdings. As prospects for indemnification became remote, Anatolia’s Board in 1932 agreed to relinquish to the ABCFM all claims to the former campus in exchange for the small property in Thessaloniki that formerly housed the Girls School. After renting that downtown building for several years, Anatolia sold it in 1937 for $9,500. The proceeds, together with a gift from Chicago supporters, were partly used to purchase additional land adjoining the Girls School on Allatini Street, intended for a dormitory, though, as it turned out, never used for that purpose. The ABCFM also transferred to Anatolia ownership of the Allatini campus as well as a “mission house” in Harilaou formerly occupied by Rev. Brewster and his family. Only in 1939 did Anatolia receive a modest



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

229

share of indemnities paid by the Turkish state. These several transactions effectively closed the issue of Anatolia’s rights to the Merzifon campus and resolved outstanding property matters with the ABCFM.50 The Anatolia team, anticipating assurances of more substantial funding, took the first tentative steps to transform the stony Pylea farmland into a college campus by plowing, grading, fencing, and carving trails to the projected building sites. The Hall Fund grant gave the project new momentum while additional land acquisition extended the designated campus to forty acres by 1932. A new public road provided it with better access to the city’s eastern suburbs, the Harilaou campus and nearby stone quarries. The first modest construction of brick and stucco, intended to be an industrial shop for the school’s Self-Help activities, initially served for overseeing construction. With some modification, it also temporarily housed George Jr. and Elsie White, who had arrived to supervise the project. A gifted gardener who had studied landscaping in California, Elsie White embraced the task of transforming bare fields into graceful gardens, groves, and lanes. She erected a greenhouse and planted a variety of trees, shrubs, and flowers, with preference for evergreens and other plants requiring a minimum of scarce water. Grapevines imported from America to ward off the phyloxera menace that had decimated Greek vineyards were obtained from a nearby nursery. Photographs from these years reveal the remarkable progression from starkly barren hillside to richly adorned yards and walkways. The first major building to be completed was the President’s (later Morley) House, a handsome stone structure of three stories where both generations of Whites resided from 1929.51 In Boston, Anatolia’s Board of Trustees, chaired from 1929 by Rev. Russell Henry Stafford, monitored every phase of this major investment and authorized expenditures. Once the decision had been taken that Anatolia’s future lay in Thessaloniki, the trustees lost no time in backing White’s efforts to make the move to the healthier Pylea location. A prominent New York architect, W. S. Thompson, was engaged to prepare a preliminary design for the new campus, which the Board readily approved. The plan adhered to the traditional model of college campuses in projecting an elongated quadrangle enclosed by ten substantial buildings. The two most critical structures for the school’s start-up, an academic hall and a dormitory, estimated to cost at least $100,000, were designated for construction the moment adequate funds materialized. Trustees’ concerns about a reliable source of water delayed final approval until President White was able to relay a commitment by the Harilaou Water Company to supply the College from the springs of Mt. Hortiatis. In early 1931 the Board finally authorized construction of the main building to accommodate classrooms, laboratories, and the library and a dormitory to house seventy-five boys.52

230

Chapter 6

A key individual joined the construction project at this time. Lee Myer, a Mennonite Christian from Pennsylvania, had been a member of the NER team assigned to Merzifon in 1919. He later brought his architectural and engineering skills to the service of the NER orphanage on Syros Island. George D. White, then its director, was so impressed by Myer’s mastery of building practices that he urged his employment to supervise the design and construction of the new Anatolia campus. Myer proceeded to plan and oversee the erection of the three finest buildings to be established on the Anatolia campus during the twentieth century. On the slopes of Mt. Hortiatis, only a few miles above Anatolia’s new location, rock quarries yielded marbleized stone of exceptional quality. Lee Myer worked with local laborers to haul this superb building material to the Pylea site. Given that a major factor in the cost of such a heavy substance was transportation, the nearby source proved to be a boon for the project’s budget. Other savings resulted from the government’s considerate waiving of duties on imported materials and furnishings. Local authorities showed exceptional goodwill in issuing the required building permits. The ground breaking for Minnesota Hall, the dormitory named in honor of generous donors from President White’s home territory, took place in June 1931. Construction of Macedonia Hall, the main academic building, commenced shortly after. Alumni Hall, the refectory nobly supported by Anatolia graduates, was begun in the summer of 1933. A water cistern was built just above the campus to relay the flow from the Mt. Hortiatis springs, followed by construction of a small electric power plant. Tennis courts, the first athletic facilities on the new campus, attested to the importance accorded to sports at Anatolia.53 It had been George White’s fond hope that the new facilities would be sufficiently advanced to allow him to oversee the College’s relocation to the upper campus. The trustees had extended his presidency for two years beyond age seventy with that expectation. But financial strains and delays during the economic depression prevented that hope from being realized; the dedication of the new campus was left to his successor, though President Emeritus and Mrs. White were in full attendance.54 It seems abundantly clear that without the determination of George White, aided always by his wife, Esther, Anatolia College could not have continued after being closed in Turkey in 1921. It had no future in Merzifon, as the courageous but ultimately futile efforts of the remaining missionary educators there and in other Turkish provinces sadly demonstrated. At an age when most professionals were ready for retirement, George and Esther took up the challenge of reestablishing Anatolia in Greece with minimal resources while confronting a legion of obstacles. They won the confidence of the American Board and the friendship and



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

231

support of the Greek community, including officials in government and the Orthodox Church who might well have been dubious about such foreign initiatives. The Whites campaigned successfully in the United States for funds to assist this new and uncertain venture when the American economy was in its darkest era. For a full decade, they sustained a humble interim school in the refugee settlement of Harilaou. It was only through faith, dedication, and the wisdom gained from decades of service that they were able both to ennoble that operation and also build a new campus well beyond what were then the borders of the Thessaloniki community. There were indeed dark moments; White wrote of emerging from “the slough of depression” during those early years in Thessaloniki. But he counted that decade as the most important of his life’s work. He was sustained by his belief that “love is stronger than hate. Goodwill has more staying power than has tyranny.” It was that goodwill, the belief that “after all humanity is essentially one,” that radiated widely and won the cooperation of Greek and American colleagues. While relocating from the Asian continent to that of Europe, from a Muslim society to an Orthodox Christian one, its new home a territory only recently acquired by Greece and undergoing fundamental demographic and social change, Anatolia faced the basic question of how to define its new mission. The original purpose at its founding was to win souls for Christ. Among those missionaries now assigned to Thessaloniki were some who retained an unwavering belief in that hallowed cause, backed by members of Anatolia’s Board in Boston. George White, the son of a missionary, had himself been trained as a Protestant minister and served as a church pastor before embarking on his long journey as a missionary educator. He understood that Anatolia’s mission in Merzifon had moved decisively beyond proselytizing to embrace broad education with a Christian foundation but serving a wide variety of temporal objectives. Circumstances in Greece necessitated still further movement away from the evangelical cause toward a clearly humanistic one if the school was to survive and flourish. White recognized that Anatolia was now subject to the laws of Greece and that its purpose must be to serve the Greek people within the social and cultural realities of their society. This principle seems to have guided the president when confronting missionary fervor, Greek Orthodox doctrine backed by legal authority, widespread poverty in Thessaloniki, and severely limited institutional resources. Anatolia was no longer simply an American school operating abroad. Henceforth, it was a Greek-American institution requiring close partnership between its American sponsors and the society it had come to serve. Over the following years, the precise terms of that partnership would

232

Chapter 6

shift and evolve. Anatolia could not have begun its long journey without George White’s discerning judgment in surmounting the many hurdles at its outset and laying foundations that were to endure. Symbolizing White’s achievement in bridging the religious and cultural chasm was the consecration in 1936 of the Orthodox chapel in Macedonia Hall for St. Georgios, “Georgios” being the Hellenic equivalent of George, by vote of Anatolia’s faculty and with the blessing of Bishop Gennadios.55 Upon retirement, George and Esther White continued to promote Anatolia in the United States as volunteers until a home they had begun to have constructed next to the Anatolia campus would be ready. Their intention, never to be realized, was to reside there with their son and his wife. It was also at this time that George began writing his Adventuring with Anatolia College, published in 1940. That enduring work is remarkable for its accuracy, detail, and success in evoking the spirit of Anatolia College.56 ERNEST WILSON RIGGS: SEASONED MISSIONARY EDUCATOR A more experienced and committed missionary educator than Ernest W. Riggs could scarcely have been found to assume responsibilities as Anatolia’s president, or one with a more convincing pedigree. His grandfather, Elias, had enjoyed universal respect as the virtual patriarch of the ABCFM’s Turkish mission during its early years in Constantinople, and his father, Edward, was one of the most stalwart members of the Merzifon station and of Anatolia’s founding quartet. Born in Merzifon in 1881, five years before Anatolia was founded, Ernest grew up with the College. After following his father’s path to Princeton University and completing his religious training at Auburn Theological Seminary, he returned to Turkey to serve the missionary cause, as did his three brothers and two of his three sisters. He was first appointed as an instructor at Euphrates College at Harput (1904), where his older brother, Henry, then presided. Ernest married Alice Shepard, also born in Turkey of missionary parents serving the ABCFM, largely in Aintab. While still in his twenties, he succeeded his brother in 1910 as president of Euphrates College until it was closed by World War I. Following the war, Ernest became Child Welfare Director for the NER, assisting displaced orphans, but was expelled from Turkey in 1921 by the Kemalists for his efforts to aid Armenians. Over the next decade, he held various posts in the ABCFM, traveling to mission stations and schools. Ernest’s connections with Anatolia in Greece were many. His youngest brother, Theodore, joined George White’s team as business manager until his untimely death in 1925. His sister Susan Riggs Getchell with her husband, Dana, oversaw the College’s junior division as



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

233

they had done in Merzifon. His cousin, Rev. J. Riggs Brewster, taught religion at Anatolia until 1931. Ernest visited the College in 1925 and again in 1928, shortly after joining its Board of Trustees, and for several years fulfilled the duties of trustee secretary.57 However, the appointment of a new Anatolia president proved to be no simple matter. The dynamics surrounding the selection of White’s successor reflected the rifts and uncertainties that had developed in the missionary movement in the Near East following its setbacks after World War I but also illustrated how Anatolia had moved beyond the missionary orbit. George White had managed with no little difficulty to gain permission from the ABCFM to relocate the school in Greece, where evangelistic prospects were dim at best. He had succeeded in adapting the College’s ethos, staff, and curriculum to the prevailing realities of its new environment, ensuring its survival while also laying the foundation for its flourishing with a purely educational mission. However, what might be termed White’s liberal educational strategy did not necessarily coincide with the outlook of many of his colleagues in Boston, where members of the ABCFM’s Prudential Committee still constituted the majority of Anatolia’s Board, or of all its personnel assigned to mission and educational duties in Greece. The drama that ensued in selecting Anatolia’s new president merits a brief recounting. The three generations of Riggs had not only been an incomparably more prolific source of ABCFM personnel in Turkey than any other missionary family, but they also ranked among the most committed to the evangelical cause. Ernest’s older brothers, Henry and Charles, in their several writings already cited, were among those who championed the continuation of mission work in Turkey, despite setbacks and obstacles, and urged more dynamic measures to convert Muslims. Charles continued preaching and publication work in Istanbul well into the 1930s, while Henry headed the Near East Theological School in Beirut. Ernest Riggs sounded those same themes, applauding the Board’s decision to pursue its work in Turkey after the war and to “present the claims of the Gospel to the Turkish people.” As ABCFM secretary, he wrote: “Evangelism may be defined as the ‘effort to promote conversion.’ It is neither education nor philanthropy; it is the direct presentation of the call of Jesus to those who have not accepted it.” It would appear therefore that some distance separated the position of the Riggs brothers on fundamental issues of religious calling from the delicately balanced concept of Anatolia’s mission that White had sculpted in Thessaloniki.58 Such, apparently, was the view taken by the staff at Anatolia. The College bylaws, originally adopted in Merzifon and periodically revised, assigned authority for directing its operation to a local Board of Managers consisting of senior American personnel. Among its responsibilities was

234

Chapter 6

to propose for trustee approval administrative appointments, including that of the president. Accordingly, in early 1932 the trustees requested that body to submit proposals for Dr. White’s successor, due to assume office in less than eighteen months. Ernest Riggs, in the meantime, had resigned his position as foreign secretary of the ABCFM and as Anatolia trustee so as to pursue graduate study in education at Harvard and Boston universities, presumably in preparation for his anticipated appointment to the Anatolia presidency. To the evident surprise of the trustees, the managers in Thessaloniki responded by suggesting for consideration George H. Huntington, vice president of Robert College, the famous institution in Istanbul that stood outside the missionary network. A close friend of George White, he had visited and spoken at Anatolia only the previous year. Trustee Chairman Stafford responded by expressing doubts about Huntington’s availability and qualifications and requested the managers to submit additional proposals, noting that the trustees believed Ernest Riggs would be a fine choice. The response from the school was to nominate a leading figure in the international YMCA organization currently located in Paris, Dr. Donald Lowrie. A minority of the Board of Managers registered its preference for Rev. Riggs, as did Rev. J. Riggs Brewster and Rev. Ernest Pye, no longer in Thessaloniki but whose terms on that Board had not formally expired.59 The reaction by the trustees was decisive. They quickly revised the bylaws to specify that henceforth the campus Board of Managers might submit nominations for the presidency but would not enjoy that privilege exclusively. At the same January 1933 meeting, they voted to consider Dr. Lowrie but in the event that he was not selected to offer the position to Rev. Riggs. Three months later, the trustees proceeded to appoint Ernest W. Riggs to succeed George White as Anatolia’s fourth president. In defense of what might appear a high-handed act on the Board’s part, it should be recalled that the bylaws had been adopted when the College was only one of several operations underway in Merzifon and not the highest priority of ABCFM’s Prudential Committee, then acting as trustees. The ABCFM’s interest at that time was concentrated more upon the Seminary and other evangelical purposes, whereas it viewed the College as a collateral activity that would hopefully contribute to its higher priorities. There was little concern as to who among the mission personnel would undertake Anatolia’s administration. By 1932, however, circumstances were very different. Anatolia’s Board of Trustees was now responsible solely for the College and resolved to exercise its authority accordingly.60 In many ways, Ernest Riggs assumed Anatolia’s presidency at an unenviable time. The deepening Depression made the task of finding resources



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

235

more difficult and slowed preparation of the new campus. The United States devalued the dollar in 1933, thereby reducing the drachma equivalent of funds sent from America and causing, among other things, a halt to construction of a campus residence for the dean. The College was obliged to contract loans from local banks at high cost while requiring its staff to accept a salary reduction. Moreover, Greece was shortly to experience another political convulsion with the Metaxas dictatorship (1936–1940) followed by World War II, which closed Anatolia for five years. On the other hand, the new president inherited impressive accomplishments from Anatolia’s first decade in Thessaloniki. The nucleus of the Pylea campus was ready to receive the College at the end of Riggs’s first year in office. Its dedication at the graduation ceremony in June of 1934 was a glorious event. His Holiness, Bishop Gennadios, a towering figure in the Orthodox Church and close friend of Anatolia, blessed the celebration. Keynote speaker was U.S. Ambassador Lincoln MacVeagh, whose subsequent report to the State Department was most complimentary about Anatolia and the work of President Riggs. That fall classes began on the new site, and the makeshift Harilaou premises were closed. Nothing could demonstrate more convincingly that Anatolia, no longer a refugee institution of uncertain future, had put down lasting roots in Greece.61 To be sure, the new site was still minimally equipped to receive the student body. Minnesota Hall was ready to lodge up to seventy-five boarders. It also housed resident teachers and the school nurse and included a study room and recreation space. Macedonia Hall provided ten classrooms, four offices, and a science laboratory on its two main floors, with the small Orthodox chapel in the basement. It also housed the growing library in the annex to the second floor where construction still continued, as it did on the third story. When completed, it was one of the most impressive structures in that region of Greece. Both buildings were provided with central heating and fireproofing, rare features in Greece at that time. The Alumni Hall dining center and the dean’s residence remained in earlier stages of construction. It seems hard to imagine today, as traffic streams by Anatolia en route to the sprawling suburbs of Panorama and Hortiatis miles above the campus, how remote this site appeared to residents of Thessaloniki at that time and how bold was its choice. To illustrate, it had been earlier anticipated that only boarding students would be brought to the Pylea campus because of its distance from Thessaloniki and the uncertainty of transportation. Day students, according to the initial plan, would continue to be taught either at Harilaou or in the city, probably in rented quarters. It was finally decided to bring day students by bus to the campus, despite the inconveniences that initially entailed. A major consideration in that decision would surely have been the cost of maintaining two separate schools.

236

Chapter 6

Student reactions to this new educational outpost were at first mixed. Some voices lamented the isolation of the few stark buildings against a barren landscape far from any social contact. The only movements to be seen in the area were mostly shepherds driving their flocks along the narrow road and donkeys laden with holm oak to be sold as fuel for urban ovens. Commuting between Thessaloniki and the campus posed hazards and delays, given the rough road and unreliable buses. When a severe storm descended during the late winter of 1935–1936, day students, the majority of the student body, had to stay the night, sleeping on library tables and floors.62 Such reservations were soon overcome as the physical plant expanded under the skilled supervision of Lee Myer, while the campus groves and gardens blossomed through the expert touch of Elsie White. Myer was ably assisted by Ioannis Askitopoulos, a master carpenter who oversaw the crafting of furnishings. An apprentice from among the several youths whom the business manager, George D. White, brought from Syros, Lazaros Amarantides, now began his long service in maintaining and protecting the campus. At the same time, Lazaros’s mother prepared to succeed Lilian Sewny as dormitory “matron” upon the latter’s retirement a few years later, while his sister, Armonia, assumed similar duties at the Girls School. Ample opportunity was afforded scholarship students to acquire building and gardening skills while meeting their work obligations. Patroclos Tzizinikas ’37 recalls long hours assisting the carpenter to earn his scholarship. All students were enlisted for tasks such as planting pine saplings across the hitherto bare slopes, thereby giving them a sense of participation in the campus’s development. Alumni Hall was completed in 1937, housing the dining hall, kitchen, laundry, dormitory rooms for older students, and an apartment for the residence director, Orestes Iatrides, professor of social studies, and his family. Graduates from those years remember joyful evenings in the commons room in Minnesota Hall. Construction of the dean’s residence that had stopped for lack of funds was resumed when Dr. W. D. Westervelt, pastor of a Congregational Church in Hawaii and former seminary colleague of George White, made a second generous donation. Having visited Anatolia in 1926 and pledged a sum at that time, he and his wife now provided additional means to complete the Caroline Westervelt House, named for their granddaughter. Sale of the school property in Harilaou helped to relieve the overall construction deficit. The entire investment for the campus by this time was approximately $156,000. As more funds became available, the third floor of Macedonia Hall was finished in 1937. Its auditorium, abutted by spacious roof terraces, accommodated daily chapel exercises and the Sunday evening vespers, lectures,



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

237

concerts, theater presentations, and social gatherings. Particular care was given to equipping the physics laboratory as well as the chemistry and biology labs housed separately in a nearby workshop. Whereas science instruction in Greece tended to be largely theoretical, Anatolia stressed practical applications and experimentation. The library had expanded by 1936 to ten thousand volumes in four languages: English, Greek, French, and Armenian. Sports facilities materialized as surrounding slopes were leveled. The steadily evolving campus afforded a clear view of the city and harbor of Thessaloniki and, to the southwest, the towering slopes of Mt. Olympus.63 President Riggs took up the challenge of securing resources for the growing college in the face of the economic depression. Like George White, he pursued this task in the United States, though he allocated more time to overseeing the Thessaloniki operation than his predecessor had done. An experienced administrator, he brought both skills and enthusiasm to the task. Riggs found Anatolia’s administrative structure outdated, particularly its Board of Managers composed solely of American staff. That body had emerged from the troubled interaction between Americans and their Armenian colleagues in Merzifon decades before (see chapter 2). Circumstances were much different now in Greece, including legal requirements that authority in foreign schools be shared with Greek staff. Meanwhile, the trustees had been advised by U.S. legal counsel that Anatolia’s administrative organization was inconsistent in certain respects with its Massachusetts state charter. The trustees therefore, in close cooperation with President Riggs, revised Anatolia’s bylaws to address those realities. The new formula corresponded to that of the conventional American college. The president became directly responsible to the trustees for Anatolia’s administration as chairman ex officio of the faculty and all committees while presiding over faculty meetings. Following consultation with senior staff, he proposed the curriculum, personnel appointments and promotions, and the annual budget for trustee approval. In a particularly decisive step, the Board of Managers was now abolished. At the same time, the trustees approved a new personnel formula proposed by Riggs. The faculty was assigned professorial grades with corresponding salaries and perquisites. The new plan embraced both teaching and administrative employees, Greeks and Americans, though with some differentiation. Key features included a tenure provision termed “Career Membership” with pension benefits. Tenured faculty and staff were enrolled in the Retirement Fund for Lay Workers, a subsidiary organization of the ABCFM. The overall effect of these measures was to strengthen the role of the president relative to the other American administrators and to provide Anatolia’s Greek personnel with a measure of comfort and

238

Chapter 6

security at the very time they were required to endure a salary reduction due to the financial straits of those Depression times. In explaining this new administrative structure to the soon to be defunct Board of Managers, Mabel E. Anderson, secretary of the Board of Trustees, conveyed the trustees’ recognition that “they are making a radical change in the administrative policy of the College” necessary to bring it into line with similar institutions. They did not see this development as decreasing the responsibilities of the dean or the business manager or perceive “any danger of an undemocratic organization developing out of this.” On the contrary, they anticipated the fullest possible cooperation between the president and other officers and faculty, “while at the same time the President becomes the one on the field responsible to the Trustees.”64 The key figure assisting Riggs to assume his new responsibilities and carry out the administrative reordering was Carl Compton. Although he had been acting chairman of the Board of Managers during George White’s extensive absences in the United States, Compton now bent every effort toward making the transition as smooth as possible. He had expressed to Chairman Stafford his view that the managers had come to exercise excessive authority. He conveyed the opinion, shared, he said, by George White, that now that Anatolia had an active Board of Trustees and a strong and permanent college staff, academic policy should be entrusted more to the faculty with the managers limited to matters of finance and personnel. Compton’s loyalty was clearly to the College, and he saw his duty to be in assisting the new president to exercise his talents to Anatolia’s best advantage and in promoting institutional harmony.65 Not all of Compton’s colleagues shared his outlook, to their detriment as events proved. William Hawkes, librarian and senior teacher now completing his second tour at Anatolia, who was also secretary of the Board of Managers until its abolition, had expressed very different views to the president and the trustees. He and Mrs. Jessie Hawkes, music teacher, shortly before departing for furlough in the United States in 1937, were informed that their employment would be terminated due to financial constraints. Arriving in the United States without employment, it was over a year before Hawkes was able to secure appointment as pastor of a Congregational Church in Connecticut. In the meantime, the trustees provided financial assistance.66 Business manager George D. White undertook finding new employment in Cyprus the following year. Clearly, it had been his intention to remain at Anatolia. He had purchased land adjacent to the campus and erected a substantial home designed as the long-term residence for his family, including President Emeritus White and Mrs. Esther White, who had expressed their intention of residing in Thessaloniki. They relocated



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

239

instead to Omaha where their daughter Margaret served as YMCA secretary, and the College purchased the White house for its expanding campus. Dana Getchell, stalwart mission hand from prewar years in Merzifon, elected to retire in 1936 and departed with his wife, Susan, Ernest Riggs’s sister. Building superintendent Lee Myer, his task of constructing the new campus largely accomplished, also departed. The only remaining members of the former Board of Managers were Carl Compton and Bertha Morley at the Girls School. There was clearly a new order at Anatolia.67 ANATOLIA’S FIFTY-YEAR MILESTONE As Anatolia commenced its second decade in Greece, Thessaloniki and its surrounding Macedonian province had taken impressive steps to recover from the recent wars and the massive influx of refugees. The city had made significant progress in reconstructing its central area destroyed by the 1917 fire. A new business center emerged, modeled on European prototypes and designed by an international committee headed by French architect Ernest Hebrard. Handsome archways flanking broad avenues running geometrically to the main square replaced the labyrinthine aspect of the old city. Its population had increased to about three hundred thousand, while improved roads and bridges now linked it to neighboring provinces. Perhaps most important, large-scale reclamation projects undertaken by foreign firms had drained many of the malaria-breeding swamps in the Axios, Loudias, and Strymon River valleys and surrounding lowlands, providing new farmland and employment for refugees as well as reducing the incidence of disease. Cultivable land in Macedonia had doubled in the past decade. The university was rapidly expanding, creating more opportunities for access to prestigious professions. The Thessaloniki International Fair had become an annual festival drawing Greek and foreign exhibitors. The YMCA, now occupying a spacious new building near the waterfront, made important contributions to the city’s youth through classes, athletics, and summer camps. Poverty, to be sure, remained widespread, but Thessaloniki presented a more hopeful profile, despite the worldwide economic depression.68 Anatolia itself had overcome immense obstacles to move forward with a new and growing campus and an expanding student body. It was with much-warranted optimism, therefore, that the College celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in the late spring of 1936 at its new, though still unfinished, premises. The commemoration over a three-day period featured an evening concert, graduation exercises, and the “Golden Jubilee” on June 20 in front of Macedonia Hall. Alumni were led by George Anastasiadis,

240

Chapter 6

graduate of the first Merzifon class of 1887. Speakers included the president of Robert College in Istanbul, Richard Wright; the rector of the University of Thessaloniki, Professor Papadakis; U.S. Consul General James H. Keeley, Jr.; Dr. Jesse Marden, who had managed Anatolia’s hospital in Merzifon; and President Emeritus George White, who was awarded an honorary doctorate. The importance of the occasion was emphasized by the visit the following day of King George II. It had also become clear after three years of leadership under Ernest Riggs that the balance between education and religion that George White had carefully formulated remained essentially intact. The “Jubilee Issue” of the Anatolia Catalogue made this clear with the following declaration: “The highest aim of the founders of the college was to nourish noble character undergirt with genuine religion. The atmosphere of the college is Christian. All its life is a unity. The play-fields and the laboratory have as sacred a part in building wholesome Christian character as the Ethics class, the daily chapel or the Sunday evening forum.”69 THE ALUMNI REGROUP Among the outstanding features of the Golden Jubilee was the attendance of seventy Anatolia graduates, including not a few from Merzifon. The tradition of alumni loyalty had become firmly rooted from those early years with the founding in 1891 of the Alumni Association that made regular gifts for student scholarships and awards. Devoted graduates had contributed a significant portion of the funds for construction in Merzifon of the building, aptly named Alumni Hall, housing the museum and library. During this critical phase of relocation to Greece prior to World War II, school records show fourteen classes totaling 269 students to have completed the Boys School. All graduates received diplomas authorized by the Board of Trustees and, from 1931, certified also by the Greek Ministry of Education at the secondary level, entitling them to apply for entrance to Greek universities. In the Girls School, 265 young women completed its separately evolving curriculum during the same period. However, they were not qualified for university entrance unless they did additional studies at a public institution to earn the state diploma.70 A group of fourteen from the first new wave of graduates in Harilaou revived the Alumni Association in 1929, assisted by older alumni from Merzifon. Their purpose was: “To keep the alumni of Anatolia College in touch with each other and their alma mater; to support their mutual interests and to foster their social and intellectual life.” The first president was Badrig H. Benlian ’28 and vice president was Achileas Mouradoglou,



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

241

’13, while Prodromos Ebeoglou ’26 served first as corresponding secretary and subsequently as president. Their task was not an easy one since they were few in number, as a large proportion of graduates at this time departed for Athens or abroad. Their early objectives included providing scholarships for orphan students, organizing conferences and social gatherings, and, eventually, contributing to a building on the new campus. They began by publishing the Anatolia College News, with Socrates Iakovides ’28 as its first editor. By the mid-1930s the Association was able to rent a small apartment on Komninon Street in downtown Thessaloniki to serve as an office and meeting place. In 1937 the Girls School Alumnae Club, formed the same year as the boys association, merged with them to form a single body with a legal charter. The combined group later moved to larger quarters on Athonos Square. Opportunities for social outreach in Thessaloniki beyond the family and church were severely limited in those lean years when places of public entertainment scarcely existed. The Alumni Association quickly became a focal point for the city’s modest cultural life. It filled a social void by organizing meetings, lectures, debates, musical events, and excursions, frequently using the auditorium of the neighboring Chamber of Commerce. The College encouraged these efforts through financial assistance and active participation. President Riggs frequently visited the alumni premises while Dean Compton and other instructors gave wellattended lectures. They viewed the association as an important means for maintaining links with graduates, projecting the school’s ethical values within the larger community, and winning the assistance of its graduates for the school’s future development. Alumni Day was celebrated on campus every October. The annual Alumni Dance, held at graduation time, became one of Thessaloniki’s leading social events, its proceeds allocated for College scholarships. The most tangible token of the importance to the school of its graduates was naming the third major building on the new campus “Alumni Hall,” thereby perpetuating the Merzifon tradition and signaling the expectation that former students would assign a high priority to the College in their personal scale of loyalties. No less significant perhaps was the appointment of the first alumnus to the Board of Trustees, Raphael S. Demos (originally Demetracopoulos), class of 1910, professor of philosophy at Harvard University.71 Throughout Anatolia’s early years in Thessaloniki, its legacy of achievement and loss on another continent could not but figure strongly in its self-image. In Turkey, the College had reached heights of educational accomplishment, as reflected in its level of learning, material resources, placement of graduates across a broad spectrum of professions, and in-

242

Chapter 6

fluence on the local society, that remained as yet unmatched in its new location. It had also endured the deepest of tragedies in Asia Minor. The College’s current leaders—the Whites, Riggses, Comptons, Getchells, Morley, and others—had experienced those successes and ordeals in the prime of their lives. Moreover, the first generation of students in Thessaloniki, largely refugees, carried the deep scars of their families’ uprooting from communities they had long called their own. For some of them, the loss was indeed profound. Iakovos Pavlides ’36 was the son of Pavlos Pavlides, trained at the Merzifon Seminary and later Protestant pastor in the town, who was hanged by the vengeful Turks in 1921 at Amasia. Ioannis Evstathiades ’39 was the son of Charalambos Evstathiades, 1914 graduate and young Anatolia instructor who fell victim to the same mass hangings. Haris Theocharides ’40 was the nephew of Demetrios Theocharides, an 1888 graduate who taught many years at Anatolia before sharing that same fate. For these young Anatolians, their past could not but remain vivid and omnipresent. As the College strived to rebuild its educational edifice in Greece, one of its important services was helping these and many other young refugees to reassemble their lives in a new land.72 POLITICAL SHADOWS Anatolia’s resurrection in Thessaloniki took place against an unstable political backdrop of short-lived governments and recurring crises. During the two decades between World Wars I and II, Greece endured twentyseven changes of administration, two dictatorships, and a number of attempted coups. The College was not directly troubled by these convulsions in national politics. Although it depended upon cordial relations with the Ministry of Education in Athens and made constant efforts to cultivate the goodwill of local officials, as a foreign institution the school eschewed involvement in politics. Anatolia was well served by its political neutrality, buttressed by its location in a distant province away from the tumultuous capital. Even as the domestic political scene darkened, following the suspension of parliamentary government in 1936 by the recently restored King George II and the assumption of dictatorial power by General Ioannis Metaxas, Anatolia was at first little affected.73 Metaxas, trained in Germany, attempted to impose elements of Prussian discipline upon Greek society. As his administration extended its authority through increasingly invasive measures, including martial law and an intrusive internal security service, the country’s schools increasingly felt its effects. Greek youngsters were pressured to enlist in the National Youth Organization (EON), whereas associations of foreign origin



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

243

such as the Boy and Girl Scouts, YMCA, and YWCA that had been active in Greece were now banned. Metaxas himself assumed responsibility for the Education Ministry in 1938 and intensified the ideological campaign. Schools were required to allot half a day weekly for military-type exercises. Anatolia had until then employed a five-day school week, rather than the common standard of six days of classes, so as to accommodate its day students with their long commute and also to permit its Jewish students to observe their Sabbath. In order to deliver the full school curriculum, given these new circumstances, it became necessary to hold Saturday classes. Students in the last two years performed the military drills with other youth in the city, their younger classmates meeting the requirement on campus under the guidance of a faculty member. Despite these unwelcome pressures, Anatolia was largely able to ward off the influence of the dictatorship on campus life. Its location well outside the city, the large proportion of boarding students, the small, closeknit faculty and staff, and a strong campus culture all served this purpose. Its largely upper-middle-class urban clientele was less susceptible to the regime’s populist overtures. Another advantage may have been the favor shown to the school by King George, who visited the campus more than once. Metaxas himself even called on the Girls School during a trip to the north. A young Anatolia teacher of math and physics was assigned to meet the government’s requirement to establish a campus branch of EON, but with minimal consequences. The College bulletins these years make no mention of it in their listing of campus activities and organizations. Surely a major factor was the close bond of friendship and loyalty among students and teachers.74 Yet another indication of the dictatorship’s marginal influence was the fact that Anatolia’s last graduating class before the outbreak of war was one of its most outstanding. Graduates of 1940 took five of the first six places in entrance examinations for the University of Thessaloniki. That year’s top student, Dimitris Yermanos, became an accomplished scientist whose groundbreaking research in flax genetics and plant breeding at the University of California at Riverside won international acclaim.75 Byron Antoniades, arriving in Greece as an infant when his refugee parents fled Turkey, placed second in the 1940 class. He became a leading entrepreneur in Greece’s burgeoning postwar cotton textile industry, served as president of the Northern Greece Manufacturers’ Association and Mayor of Thessaloniki. Byron’s classmate, George Hatzivalasis, enjoyed a parallel career as innovator in the northern Greek cotton industry. From among the other members of the class, Michael Polemarchakis became personnel manager at the U.S. Embassy in Athens. Haris Theocharides, noted previously, completed agriculture studies at Cornell University and afterward forged a career at the American Farm School in Thessalon-

244

Chapter 6

iki. Their younger fellow student by two years, Yiannis Sossides, whose Anatolia studies were interrupted by the war, became one of Greece’s leading ambassadors. Clearly, Anatolia’s rigorous academic requirements were a significant factor in forging their success; the twelve 1940 graduates had begun seven years before as members of a preparatory class numbering twenty-seven.76 Measures introduced by Metaxas actually opened the way for certain initiatives at Anatolia, though they proved to be short-lived with the outbreak of World War II. The restructuring of secondary schools, beginning in the fall of 1938, and extending their range from six to eight years, presented a new opportunity for foreign schools governed by the 1931 law restricting their operation to the secondary level. With the former fifth and sixth years of primary education redefined as secondary classes, Anatolia accepted applications from ten- and eleven-year-olds. The result was a significant increase in enrollment and tuition revenues during this financially difficult time. The College expanded its dormitory facilities, assigning about seventy-five younger boys to the four dormitory units in Minnesota Hall, while twenty-six older students were accommodated on the second floor of the recently completed Alumni Hall.77 This development bore particular significance for the Girls School. Its facilities in the former Turkish mansion on Allatini (later Soufouli) Street were already confining. It had been compelled to lease a nearby building, termed the “Annex,” which proved to be inadequate, especially with the influx of students triggered by the new law. The ideal solution would have been to develop a parallel campus in Pylea on land adjacent to the College, but inadequate financial resources and the urgency of the situation ruled that out for the present. A more modest alternative was to adapt two existing buildings on the upper campus to receive the overflow from the Girls School. Accordingly, President’s House (renamed Morley House at this time in honor of Bertha Morley) would be converted to classrooms, with Ernest and Alice Riggs moving to the Westervelt House vacated by the Comptons during their current home leave. The ample house built by George D. White across the road from the campus would be refitted as a dormitory for the younger female contingent. In putting this plan into effect, the administration encountered not a few obstacles. Inspection of the premises was mandatory before the Ministry of Education would issue permits. The current Inspector of Foreign Schools proved to be far less cooperative than his predecessor, reflecting the changed political climate. The Board of Trustees had reservations about authorizing expenditures for renovation, especially given the troubled political horizon. After many delays, Ernest Riggs succeeded in the late summer of 1940 in gaining government permits, valid initially for only two years, as well as Board approval. Five sections, totaling ninety-



Rebuilding Anatolia in Greece (1924–1940)

245

six of the younger girls, were moved to the hastily renovated facilities on the upper campus for the beginning of the 1940 fall term under the supervision of Mary Ingle as dean. English by nationality, she had joined the Girls School faculty in 1936 following studies at Pacific Grove University in Oregon and Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. The total College enrollment now exceeded four hundred. It was only one month later that the Italian army invaded Greece and all the country’s schools were closed. Though the move proved abortive, it prefigured the postwar relocation of the Anatolia Girls School to the Pylea campus.78 During the final months before the Italian invasion, political developments became increasingly ominous. Following the occupation of Albania by Mussolini’s forces in April 1939, the outbreak of hostilities in western Europe that September, and the worsening outlook in the first months of 1940, U.S. Vice Consul Edmund Gullion (later to become chairman of Anatolia’s Board of Trustees) conveyed the State Department’s advice that American personnel withdraw from Greece. Accordingly, five teachers, the bulk of Anatolia’s American teaching staff, departed in the spring of 1940 before the end of the school year. They were Everett and Mary Stephens, Carol Hodge, Esther Peck, and John Martin. Although classes resumed that fall, they were shortly suspended when Prime Minister Metaxas rejected Mussolini’s ultimatum of October 28, 1940. The government ordered a general mobilization and imposed martial law, suspending the operation of all schools. Greece was again at war.79 For the third time, Anatolia closed its doors. World War II proved to be a dreadful experience for the Greek people and for Anatolia as well. But the roots it had planted in Greece those past sixteen years were too deep to be dislodged.

Map of Anatolia College campuses in Thessaloniki.

Athletic contest on Marathon Field in front of Tracy Hall, the converted casino that served as the main building for Anatolia’s Boys School in Harilaou, Thessaloniki, 1924–1934.

Students exercising by bicycle and on foot with Anatolia dormitory in left background.

A student doing the high jump.

Student body in late 1920s.

Faculty and graduating class with President George White in first row, center, and Dean Carl Compton in first row, second from right.

Anatolia Girls School at Allatini (Sofouli).

Girls School dance group in traditional Greek costumes.

Girls School graduating class of 1935 with Principal Morley.

7

} Anatolia’s Third Wartime Interruption (1940–1945)

T

GREECE’S HEROIC DEFENSE

he world observed with awe the valiant defense by the Greek people of their homeland. This small country, still recovering from the tumultuous effects of World War I and its aftermath, withstood the unprovoked onslaught by a major Axis power. Contrary to all expectations and despite vastly inadequate military resources, excepting only personal courage, Hellenic forces halted the Italian advance across the country’s northwestern frontier. Moreover, their counterattack in November 1940 drove the invaders from Greek soil and seized the main towns of southern Albania. There a stalemate ensued throughout the winter. The Italians’ vastly superior forces failed to dislodge the spirited Greek troops. Enduring the severest hardships on the wintry cliffs of ancient Illyria, the brave defenders evoked the most heroic feats of their rich past. How does one explain the extraordinary bravery of ordinary Greeks who threw themselves into the seemingly hopeless struggle against overwhelming odds? The best answer perhaps came from one of Anatolia’s most distinguished alumni. Athanasios Aghnides, Merzifon graduate of 1898, was at this time Under Secretary General of the League of Nations and would soon become Greek Ambassador to Great Britain. When implored by a high Italian official in March 1941 to intervene with the Greek government to end its stubborn and ultimately futile resistance in Albania, Aghnides replied:

247

248

Chapter 7

My countrymen are an obstinate and uncompromising lot when it comes to matters concerning their country’s independence and honour. Maybe we shall disappear as a nation, as you seem to imply, but even then it would be in a good cause; it would be preferable for the Greek survivors to be able to relish the fact that honour was saved and that modern Greece had done something to justify its ancient origins and existence rather than live dishonoured and despised.1

ANATOLIA BECOMES A HOSPITAL Thessaloniki experienced the violence of the Italian attack from its very first week as bombs rained down upon the city. A general blackout was imposed, while all eligible young men were summoned for military service, including twenty-three members of the College staff. With schools officially closed, Anatolia’s immediate priority was to ensure the safety of its boarding students and secure their return to their homes in the surrounding provinces. This was no simple task given the prevailing chaos, as military mobilization and fleeing civilians vied for limited transportation, but it was accomplished satisfactorily. The Girls School on Allatini Street was requisitioned immediately by the Greek military. Recruits streamed by the Pylea campus en route to their assigned units in the mountains followed by Thessalonians escaping the flaming city. The College was favored by its location far from the bombing targets of the city center, harbor, and railway yards. President Riggs arranged for several families of Anatolia employees and friends to leave their downtown homes to take refuge with resident staff in the sturdy campus buildings. Personnel from the U.S. Consulate General also moved to the College those first turbulent days, using Macedonia Hall for offices. The American flag was painted on roofs and terraces for protection. The campus fortunately escaped any damage from bombings, though metal fragments from nearby antiaircraft emplacements often rained down. During the frequent air raids campus residents took refuge in improvised shelters in the basements of the main college buildings.2 Within a week after the outbreak of hostilities, the Greek Army Medical Corps requested the use of Anatolia’s facilities. By Alice Riggs’s account, President Riggs, in negotiations with General Christopoulos, agreed to provide the major buildings for a hospital to serve troops recovering from wounds and noncontagious diseases. Over the following weeks, the Corps converted Macedonia, Minnesota, and Alumni Halls into the Fifth Military Hospital of Macedonia, making alterations for medical and



Anatolia’s Third Wartime Interruption (1940–1945)

249

defense purposes. The first two buildings were used mainly as hospital wards. Doctors and nurses took up residence in Alumni Hall, where the kitchen served patients and staff. The College retained use of the remaining campus that had briefly accommodated the younger Girls School students before the outbreak of war. A fence erected at that time to separate the two schools now roughly delineated the hospital from the smaller area. Morley House and White House harbored families of Anatolia personnel and friends of the school, numbering up to sixty individuals. With Macedonia Hall now converted to medical use, U.S. Consul General John Johnson relocated his staff at the American Farm School some three miles distant. Ernest and Alice Riggs, the only remaining Americans, continued to reside in the smaller Westervelt House, where college equipment was also stored. Over the ensuing months, the total number of patients, medical staff, and school personnel with families residing on the campus reached over four hundred.3 With the economy in shambles and many families without means of support, funds began to arrive from the Greek War Relief Association recently formed in the United States. Ernest Riggs, together with prominent citizens, assisted in directing the distribution of these resources in the Thessaloniki area. They also found work for many of the unemployed while providing such necessities as bread, condensed milk, heating fuel, clothing, and blankets. In his report summarizing the committee’s activities, Riggs estimated that over sixty-four thousand individuals received daily assistance. Among the families residing on campus, most of the men were either called up for military service or assigned to civil defense duties. The arrival of wounded soldiers from the Albanian front, many having lost limbs on its frozen heights, quickly engaged the efforts of the women lodged at Anatolia. Alice Riggs outfitted the basement of Westervelt House as both a shelter and a common room where her colleagues sewed garments for hospital patients, active troops, and destitute families. They brought food treats, flowers, and games to the hospital wards, organized holiday celebrations, and did their best to boost morale. Former Anatolia librarian Theano Tiriki ’31 distributed books from Anatolia’s collection. Efthymia Stergiou-Kosmopoulou, from the class of 1930, volunteered for nursing duties at the hospital, one of several alumnae to assume such responsibilities at locations throughout the war zone. Lazaros Amarantides, from Anatolia’s prewar work crew, was assigned by the hospital authorities to oversee its maintenance until his transfer to the front. At least two Anatolia alumni were among those treated in the hospital for battle injuries.4

250

Chapter 7

THE NAZI TAKEOVER As winter wore on with the stalemate continuing in Albania, the issue that preoccupied Greece’s leaders was whether Germany would intervene to save its Italian ally from ignominious defeat. A closely related question was whether Britain should dispatch additional forces beyond its limited air support to buttress the Greek defense. Facing the Axis enemy virtually alone in the rest of Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean, Britain could spare minimal assistance. Might such marginal support only increase the probability of German intervention without improving materially Greece’s defensive capabilities? This ongoing debate within the leadership circles of the two allied countries continued after the sudden death of Metaxas in early 1941. Finally, by mutual agreement, British land units began to enter Greece in the latter part of February. The Germans concluded an alliance with Bulgaria in early March, quickly moved troops into that country, and launched their invasion of Greece through Yugoslavia and Bulgaria on April 6. Once again, Greek troops fought valiantly, now on two fronts, but could not stem the massive attack across their long northern borders. On April 9 the first German mechanized units reached Thessaloniki to find the harbor in flames from British sappers who had set fuel tanks afire and demolished military installations. The city was spared further destruction as the invaders entered unopposed.5 In the last weeks before the German breakthrough, circumstances became ever more ominous. Anticipating the expansion of hostilities, the Greek Army Medical Corps on March 11 closed its hospital at Anatolia, returning to President Riggs the campus facilities used for the past five months. The last patients were embarked on a ship headed for southern Greece but which was bombed en route, with considerable loss of life. Ernest and Alice Riggs delayed their departure until the U.S. Consulate General warned them on April 6 that the German army had crossed the Greek border and was shortly expected to reach Thessaloniki. After an emotional farewell to their Greek colleagues, the Riggses embarked on a journey that took them to Egypt, South Africa, and Trinidad before reaching New York four months later. Before departing, Riggs formally deposited the deeds to Anatolia’s property with Consul General Johnson. At the same time, he assigned responsibility for Anatolia’s welfare to a committee of three staff members, Orestes Iatrides, Prodromos Ebeoglou, and George Markoglou. Iatrides, who had gained the president’s confidence while managing the boys dormitory, teaching, and serving as adviser and translator when accompanying him on calls to Greek authorities, was now designated Anatolia’s acting director. When U.S. diplomatic authorities closed their offices and



Anatolia’s Third Wartime Interruption (1940–1945)

251

withdrew from Thessaloniki in July, Consul General Johnson turned the property deeds over to him.6 The same advantages of its location on high terrain outside the city and exceptionally large and sturdy buildings that had commended the campus for a wartime hospital now made it a similarly inviting site for the occupying German forces. They lost no time appropriating it for the headquarters of Army Group E. Legal considerations, given that the United States was still a neutral country, were apparently brushed aside in the case both of Anatolia and the American Farm School, which was also occupied. Efforts by the U.S. Consul General to intervene via diplomatic channels produced no result; in any case, American neutrality ended fewer than eight months later.7 As their invading forces continued southward beyond Thessaloniki, German authorities on April 11 ordered all those residing on campus to depart within four days. They commandeered school furnishings and equipment, but allowed some movable College property to be taken away together with the staff’s personal effects. Included were property deeds and other College documents as well as pianos, microscopes, student desks, and dining equipment. Manos Iatrides ’46, Orestes’s elder son, recalls helping to load part of the library collection on a truck for storage at the home of art teacher George Paralis. The Iatrides family stored other Anatolia equipment in the basement of their home in nearby Harilaou. When German officers requisitioned their residence, forcing them to move elsewhere, the family cemented up the basement; the German occupiers never realized that property from the American college was secured in their midst.8 The occupying troops imposed strict security on their new base, barring most visitors. Their barbed-wire enclosure encompassed not only the Anatolia campus but also two adjacent properties, an estate requisitioned from the Sossides family, whose son was enrolled at Anatolia when the war ensued, and a second owned by a German merchant named Heitmann. The Panorama road passing through the former campus was fortified and closed at night by heavy bars.9 It was here at the Wehrmacht’s hastily established regional headquarters that two controversial events ensued. First, General Georgios Tsolakoglou, commander of the Greek Third Army Corps in western Macedonia, undertook an initiative designed to halt the further disintegration of the Greek defense before the Nazi onslaught. In collusion with other officials, but in defiance of higher authority in Athens, the general concluded an armistice with the invaders. On April 23, Tsolakoglou arrived at the Anatolia campus before joining his German and Italian counterparts at the neighboring Heitmann villa to sign a protocol

252

Chapter 7

surrendering the forces under his command. His action was denounced by the Athens government, which itself took flight for refuge on Crete before that island’s fall to the Germans in late May. Eventually, King George II and his hastily constituted new government were established in Cairo. Tsolakoglou, often portrayed as Greece’s “Quisling,” proceeded to form a new government in Athens in collaboration with the occupying forces.10 A second development that led to widespread controversy years later was the stationing of Kurt Waldheim, future Secretary General of the United Nations (1972–1981) and President of the Austrian Republic (1986–1992), at Nazi headquarters in the Arsakli (Panorama) district abutting Anatolia’s campus. Lieutenant Waldheim was assigned to the intelligence unit (Ic/O3) of Army Group E under General Alexander Loehr. Between September 1942 and October 1944, he was based intermittently in the area, very likely at the Heitmann villa where the armistice had been signed, and/or the adjoining Sossides estate. In his autobiography published in 1985, Waldheim concealed his service with the Wehrmacht in Greece and the Balkans. When it later came to light, a scandal ensued with broad political ramifications.11 Having valiantly withstood the Italian invasion until German intervention tipped the balance, the Greek nation became further aggrieved when the occupying Fascist powers consigned the administration of most of its territory to the scorned Italians and the northeastern sector comprising eastern Macedonia and most of Western Thrace to the Bulgarians. Choosing to deploy their own scarce military resources elsewhere in Europe, the Germans stationed troops only in northern Greece’s central and western Macedonian provinces and in strategic zones along the Turkish border, the port of Piraeus, and a few islands. Their new encampment on the former Anatolia campus became headquarters for the German 12th army.12 The German military demonstrated characteristic thoroughness when converting the campus to its purposes by engineering alterations to the existing structures. To offset the danger of air attacks, the occupiers tunneled beneath the athletic courts and gardens between Macedonia and Minnesota Halls to carve out a labyrinth of underground corridors, bunkers, and storage vaults. To further accommodate their operations, they erected one stone building between Macedonia Hall and Morley House and a second one of brick at the western end of the campus, apparently to serve as barracks. Their endeavors to maintain the quarters with care were assisted by a former Anatolia staff member who knew and valued the campus. Lazaros Amarantides, after his discharge from the Greek army, was reemployed at his former maintenance duties by the current occupiers.13



Anatolia’s Third Wartime Interruption (1940–1945)

253

THE TRIALS OF OCCUPATION The Greek people had experienced eras of hardship and deprivation during their eleven decades of independence from Ottoman rule. But nothing matched the trials of the three and a half years of Axis occupation. The Third Reich demonstrated its indifference to the welfare, or even survival, of its conquered subjects by ruthlessly imposing heavy taxes and commandeering foodstuffs and materials for its war effort. The Bulgarian occupiers, intending to annex permanently the area assigned to them, employed brutal measures that drove more than one hundred thousand Greeks from their homes. Effective administration ceased to exist as each of the occupied zones pursued its own parochial interests, while the puppet government in Athens exercised only meager authority. A national economy gave way to regional markets functioning in irregular and perverse ways as production of food and other necessities fell drastically and unemployment became widespread. Essential imports, especially of the wheat upon which Greece depended, were curtailed by blockades imposed by both sides in the worldwide conflict. A shortage of commodities combined with a sharply devalued currency led to black market and barter transactions. The absence of a rational system of distribution and frequent breakdowns in transportation, due in part to fuel shortages, inflicted the greatest suffering upon urban residents denied access to the food-producing hinterlands. It is estimated that over ninety thousand people perished during the winter of 1941–1942 alone, mostly from hunger. More than half of the famine victims were in the AthensPiraeus area, although other towns suffered as well.14 Thessaloniki enjoyed a larger and more accessible agricultural hinterland than the capital. On the other hand, two decades after the exchange of populations in the early 1920s, it continued to support a large refugee community with exceptionally high unemployment. Those numbers now soared as thousands of new migrants poured into the area fleeing the harsh Bulgarian occupation of eastern Macedonia. The city endured severe famine from the end of 1941 until the spring of 1943. By late winter of 1942, as many as 130,000 people were estimated to be dependent on soup kitchens organized by local churches, unions, and philanthropic groups.15 Anatolia’s former students, alumni, and staff shared the myriad of ills that engulfed the Greek people at this time, including loss of work and income, scarcity of essential goods, and even starvation. Before departing, President Riggs arranged for continuing salary payments to College employees, but these ceased once the U.S. entered the war and financial transactions with Greece were blocked. Although the staff had been legally discharged in August 1941 with severance benefits, efforts to assist

254

Chapter 7

those who had been appointed as Career Members continued. Orestes Iatrides, with authorization from the trustees, was able to raise some funds for that purpose by marketing items salvaged from the College grounds and by borrowing on the local market.16 An important initiative that secured a measure of relief for the College’s former teachers and continuing education for its students was the founding of an interim Greek school. The committee of three appointed by President Riggs to exercise responsibility for the College, joined by other Anatolia colleagues, undertook to set up the new institution in a rented corner building in downtown Thessaloniki in October 1941. The Adamantios Koraïs School, named for a hero from the Greek revolutionary era, provided students with an education modeled, to the extent possible, on that of Anatolia, and provided teachers and staff with a livelihood. Iatrides led this effort, joined by Prodromos Ebeoglou, George Markoglou, and some other faculty members as partners. Olga DimitracopoulouPlatiridou headed the girls division. Most of the students had previously attended Anatolia, although the new school included elementary grades as well. One handicap was a legal prohibition against teaching English, though frequently circumvented by private lessons, but Koraïs managed to avoid offering the German language, a general requirement at this time. Despite facing immense obstacles amid the suffering of the entire population, this team of educators did their best to achieve a respectable level of instruction and sustain the morale of students and faculty.17 THE GREATEST BARBARITY Among the multitude of crimes committed by the Nazi occupiers, undisputedly the most horrendous was the mass extermination of most of the Jewish population. Given their major concentration in Thessaloniki, it was there that the greatest number of Greek Jews fell victim to Hitler’s “final solution.” In March 1943, almost two years after the German invasion, massive deportations of Jewish families began, their properties seized or looted. Packed into freight cars, they were dispatched mainly to the notorious concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. By that summer most of the Jews of Thessaloniki, as many as forty-nine thousand men, women, and children, had been forcibly transported. Only a relatively small number of mostly younger men managed to hide or escape. The great majority of those dispatched to the north perished in Nazi gas chambers. Fewer than two thousand survivors returned in 1945 to relate their appalling experience and the tragic loss of their families and friends.18 That unparalleled disaster did not spare Anatolia students and alumni. Approximately eighty Anatolians were counted among its victims, their



Anatolia’s Third Wartime Interruption (1940–1945)

255

names inscribed today on the wall of a College classroom. The great majority were females, reflecting the comparatively larger proportion of young Jews attending the Girls School in the prewar years. The loss of those precious lives deepened the profound tragedy that Anatolia shares to this day with the Thessaloniki community.19 Amid the trials of these years were also instances of heroism. Alumnus Dimitris Zannas ’38, observing the Nazis marshaling Jews for deportation in downtown Thessaloniki, contrived to separate a young female acquaintance from their columns. He then managed to hide her on a friend’s farm that happened to be managed by Stratos Paraskevaides, a fellow alumnus (1930) who had been employed at Anatolia. After surviving the war years, Marika (“Meddy”) Florentin married Stratos and joined him on the administrative staff of the reconstituted College, where both enjoyed long careers.20 One alumnus has left accounts of his experience with the guerrilla forces of EAM/ELAS (National Liberation Movement/Army). Costas Couvaras ’34, orphan and scholarship student, was president of his Anatolia class, editor of the student journal, and outstanding debater before going on to complete degrees at Cornell University. During World War II he enlisted in the U.S. army and in 1944 was deployed by its Office of Strategic Services as intelligence officer in the mountains of central Greece. In the course of reporting to OSS on developments behind German lines, “Odysseus” (his code name) became a fervent supporter of the leftist movement that aspired to liberate and then take control of the country. His narrative and photographic depictions of his mission (dubbed “Pericles”) illustrate his experiences while also conveying his advocacy of the EAM/ELAS cause. To be sure, Couvaras’s political convictions were not representative of most Anatolia alumni. Paulos Aslanides, a former student at Merzifon (1913–1916), became vice-commander of a guerrilla unit that joined the anticommunist force EDES. It was the deepening chasm between right and left that became the next great calamity to afflict this tortured country as the war neared its conclusion. Also returning to Greece in 1944 was Jay S. Seeley, American teacher at Anatolia in the early 1930s, now assigned to the OSS.21 THE GROWING POLITICAL DIVIDE During the final year of occupation, incidents of violence increased against the foreign invaders but also among rival guerrilla bands as the resistance movement, while gaining strength, faced brutal German countermeasures. The Italian collapse and withdrawal from Greece in the late summer of 1943 enabled the EAM/ELAS antartes (guerrillas) to acquire

256

Chapter 7

stores of weapons and extend their control throughout much of the country’s mountainous terrain. The Nazi response was to escalate punitive incursions, burning villages and executing rural inhabitants. In anticipation of a German withdrawal, Greek society became increasingly polarized politically, and violence intensified. The suspension of effective government and the widespread social disintegration and poverty that characterized the occupation years undermined traditional political norms and institutions and opened the way to new and radical formulations. Guerrilla forces scattered across the mountain ranges from Macedonia and Epirus in the north to the Peloponnesus were gradually forced to merge with the Communist-controlled EAM/ELAS or were dispersed. The earlier objective of harassing the conquerors transmuted into plans to reshape Greek society along radical new lines. At the opposite end of the political spectrum, there emerged the so-called security battalions. Sanctioned by the collaborationist government and enjoying German support, those armed units targeted communities and individuals seen to be linked to rebellious elements. Left and right vied for supremacy throughout the country, carrying out reprisals against real or imagined opponents while inflicting great injury upon ordinary citizens. Refugees from these clashes streamed into the major cities. One of the many tragic incidents in those final weeks of occupation took place only a few miles from Anatolia in September 1944. In reprisal for an ELAS attack on a small convoy, German units joined by Greek collaborators destroyed much of the village of Hortiatis and put to death 246 residents. The final German withdrawal in late October, accompanied by widespread destruction of roads, railways, harbors, and other facilities, left the country even more impoverished and divided politically. But it was the ideological schism that proved the major deterrent to Greece’s political and economic recovery.22 WARTIME EFFORTS IN AMERICA Ernest and Alice Riggs actively pursued opportunities to inform the American public about circumstances in Greece and to solicit aid for the impoverished country. From their home in Massachusetts, they traveled widely to speak at forums organized mainly by the Congregational Church and related groups. Riggs also pursued resources for rehabilitating the campus once it was recovered from its German occupiers. Anatolia maintained no office during the war years until August 1944. Then, with authorization from the trustees, Riggs reestablished a small office at 14 Beacon Street in Boston, from which he issued newsletters and appeals to Anatolia alumni and supporters.23



Anatolia’s Third Wartime Interruption (1940–1945)

257

Dean Carl Compton had left Anatolia with his family in 1939 for a year of furlough spent mostly in pursuing graduate studies in education at the University of Chicago. Though it was his intention to return to the College the following year, he found his way barred by increasing hostilities. Instead, he undertook volunteer work with the Greek War Relief Association in Massachusetts for most of a year before joining the teaching staff of the nearby Northfield Mount Hermon School. In the fall of 1943, Compton accepted an offer from the State Department to apply his international experience to new relief operations based in Washington, D.C. As chairman of the Inter-Agency Committee for the Trans-blockade Feeding of Greece, he helped to coordinate efforts among U.S. government agencies, foreign embassies, and the International Red Cross to provide urgently needed food, medicine, and other essential supplies to the Greek people. With the assent of the German government, ships from neutral Sweden delivered significant quantities of goods. Compton also completed a plan for a relief mission to render further assistance to Greece as soon as the war ended. After about one year in Washington, and with the German departure from Greece imminent, he accepted assignment from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) to return to Greece and assist efforts to restore the country’s economy. He arrived in war-torn Thessaloniki in mid-November 1944, escorted by an Allied military liaison unit.24 Carl Compton has described movingly his labors over more than nine months to restore some measure of security and comfort to the destitute people of northern and central Greece. He worked with British, Greek, and American officials under the most trying circumstances to deliver food and other necessities, organize social services, and repair infrastructure in the surrounding provinces. He was assisted by two Anatolia graduates, Socrates Iakovides ’28, and Constantinos Sianos ’29. Not a few Anatolia alumni found employment with UNRRA and other agencies at this time by virtue of their English-language skills. In an early letter to Riggs, Compton described the overwhelming needs encountered on all sides. The destruction and desolation were appalling, and it was hard to keep from being depressed. “The one ray of light is the loyalty and devotion of the College staff and students. With very few exceptions their spirit is inspiring. They are much troubled at present, but full of hope and courage for the future.” Compton was overjoyed to be reunited with his former colleagues, now mostly at Koraïs School, and to visit the campus, occupied by British forces shortly after the German departure. Unceasing labors from his base in downtown Thessaloniki allowed little opportunity to travel to the school in Pylea or to address issues of Anatolia’s reopening. However, he succeeded in arranging some remuneration from the United States for designated Career Members.25

258

Chapter 7

Ernest Riggs was only a few months short of his sixty-fifth year when the call came to return to an impoverished Greece. Nearing normal retirement age, he had experienced exceptional dramas and tragedies during his long career in Turkey and Greece. Nevertheless, Riggs had no hesitation about embracing the new challenge to restore Anatolia. He arrived in Thessaloniki in mid-April 1945. At President Riggs’s first meeting with former College personnel at the Koraïs School, it became clear that all anticipated Anatolia’s reopening as soon as possible. Orestes Iatrides, in a report submitted to the trustees in early 1945, had made a strong case. He cited the College’s fine reputation, the Koraïs School’s success, prevailing pro-American sentiment, and the closing of rival foreign schools as important advantages. Accordingly, Riggs and Compton wired to the trustees the “urgent demand” to commence classes the following October. The Board promptly authorized the same and preparations began.26 RESURRECTING ANATOLIA The decision to resume Anatolia’s operation in less than six months was indeed a bold one given the circumstances. The former campus was still under military occupation, though British rather than German. Its facilities would have to be reconverted to academic purposes. Furnishings, books, and other important materials had been lost, and much of the personnel and student body had been dispersed. These were only a few of the obstacles facing Riggs and his colleagues at this point. Despite these hurdles, their overriding motivation was to restore confidence and morale among Anatolia’s former staff and students. When elaborating on his recommendation to the trustees, Riggs enumerated the reasons, including the advantages of the College’s “grounds, the view, the air, the freedom and the sense of being in our own home where spiritual traditions have been fashioned.” As the Anatolia team confronted the challenge of reestablishing normalcy amid the physical, social, and economic ruins left by the German invaders, they enjoyed one distinct advantage. The Greek staff under Orestes Iatrides had struggled to harbor a worthy educational community at Koraïs School despite the adversities of the occupation. Enrollment had reached over 380, including the elementary school, and they had moved to a larger building, a former Italian school on Queen Olga Street, after the Germans withdrew. Their accomplishment was nothing less than heroic and gave powerful impetus to the new effort to reopen the College.27 A major challenge was to prepare the campus and its dormitories for fall classes. The German command had maintained the premises in de-



Anatolia’s Third Wartime Interruption (1940–1945)

259

cent condition, doubtless due in large measure to the efforts of Lazaros Amarantides as maintenance supervisor. Fortunately also, the departing invaders did not inflict deliberate destruction such as happened at the nearby American Farm School and other sites. During the chaos following the Nazi flight, however, lawless elements quickly descended upon the campus to seize furniture and equipment. At the request of the committee assigned by President Riggs in 1941 to exercise responsibility for the school, newly arriving British troops secured the premises only a few days later. Unfortunately, they included Gurkha units from the Fourth Indian Division, which showed scant concern for the facilities. Residing in Macedonia Hall, they lit cooking fires on its tiled floors. Upon their departure a few months later, interior walls, electrical fixtures, windows, plumbing, and heating units had been demolished. Campus trees were uprooted and gardens trampled by military vehicles. Iatrides wrote to Anatolia’s Board in March 1945 that more damage had been done to the campus and its equipment in the past four months than during the previous four years.28 The burden of preparing the campus for fall classes fell squarely upon Riggs and the small staff he was able to assemble. The first need was to reclaim key buildings from the British, who proved cooperative but were slow to vacate the premises. Following the intervention of U.S. Consul Gwynn, they first released Minnesota and Alumni Halls, enabling the College to clean and whitewash those two dormitories, as well as White House. By midsummer they had turned over the remaining buildings, but retained the lower portion of the campus as a training center for mostly Indian troops. Their prefabricated Quonset huts mounted on cement floors jarred visually with the school buildings until torn down several years later. The British command also provided compensation for property damage and provided labor and equipment to assist with repairs. Two major tasks in restoring the campus were the removal of an immense mound of earth deposited in front of Macedonia Hall by the Germans when excavating their underground installations, and of tons of cement flooring from Minnesota Hall installed by the hospital to protect its basement air raid shelter. Lazaros Amarantides, given his long involvement with the campus, was again the key figure for managing the many technical chores. The British military assigned him responsibility for overall physical maintenance, duties that he resumed once more with Anatolia. Prewar librarian Socrates Eleftheriades began cataloging as many books as could be found scattered around campus, in the homes of graduates, or in local bookshops comprising the remainder from about eight thousand volumes that the Germans had allowed friends of the College to collect shortly before their departure. The massive chore of restoring the school’s facilities and

260

Chapter 7

furnishings was hindered by the widespread shortage of materials, high prices and a valueless currency, slow remittance of funds from the United States, and petty thievery amid the prevailing economic disorder. But the work went forward nonetheless. The most demanding task of restoration pertained to the Girls School. The inadequacy of the Allatini Street premises had prompted the makeshift relocation of the younger female contingent to the Pylea campus just before the war began. Though an imperfect solution, there seemed to be none better at hand. Any prospect of continuing to use the Allatini premises vanished when an unexplained fire in August 1945 consumed much of the former school building occupied by British units. The Pylea campus would now have to encompass the entire girls department. Plans for a whole new complex across the road to the south of the main campus were under preparation by an American architect, but their realization lay in the distant future at best. To supplement the White House and Morley House facilities, the stone building erected by the Germans was now adapted to classroom use, a shed was quickly built next to it to house three more classrooms, and a nearby garage was renovated for assemblies and gymnastics. A chicken house built by the Whites was upgraded to a temporary faculty residence. Such improvisations inspired hope, rather than embarrassment, in the context of a society rising from years of impoverishment.29 The mid-1940s proved a tragic time for Greece as the country staggered from enemy occupation to a frightful civil war. Whereas other countries of Western Europe that had endured the Nazi menace moved rapidly toward recovery, Greece plunged into a new conflict that was to endure at great cost until the end of the decade. Anatolia would experience all the country’s continuing trials. Reassuringly, however, the fall of 1945 ended the third hiatus in its operation since its founding in 1886. It was a hopeful team of Greek and American educators who welcomed a new generation of students to the partially restored campus that September.

8

} Anatolia Renewed From Civil War to a Brighter Era (1945–1958)

C

RESTORING THE COLLEGE

lasses resumed in mid-September 1945. President Riggs presided over the first meetings of the faculty, consisting mainly of teachers returning from Koraïs School. Carl Compton had left for the United States to recover from his grueling nine months with UNRRA before resuming duties as Boys School dean in early 1946. Mary Ingle, newly appointed dean for the Girls School, would return in November. The only foreign teachers in place by the beginning of lessons, in a faculty totaling about twenty-six, were Ann Arpajoglou, English teacher, and Mrs. Alice Riggs, who taught English part-time. They were joined two months later by Georgia Theophilis, an American of Greek origin. Living conditions were judged to be too harsh and costs too high to bring other Americans at this time. Anatolia thus commenced operation essentially through the relocation of Koraïs School’s secondary division, both teachers and students, to the Pylea campus and by reopening the College’s dormitories. Key figures in accomplishing this transition were Orestes Iatrides, formerly Koraïs director, who now resumed teaching and managing the boys dormitory together with Mrs. Iatrides; and Prodromos Ebeoglou, who oversaw administrative and financial matters. Olga Demetracopoulou-Platiridou, head of the Koraïs girls department, returned to this same responsibility at Anatolia. Koraïs continued to operate at the elementary level, preparing students especially for Anatolia entrance.1 261

262

Chapter 8

An immediate concern was the educational void resulting from the previous five years, when instruction had taken place in all schools for a total of only seventeen months and under the most trying conditions. It was essential to assist students to overcome their resulting deficiencies. An early measure by the Ministry of Education was to extend the 1944–1945 school year, which had begun only in March 1945, through that December. The following academic “year” would begin January 1946 and run only until June. Anatolia’s first nine months were preoccupied chiefly with restoring normalcy across its educational spectrum. As Mary Ingle observed, the first relatively normal school year was 1946–1947.2 A particular deficiency appeared in English-language instruction. It had been banned during the Nazi occupation, and older students were consequently unprepared for advanced lessons. Hence, it proved necessary to form accelerated classes and set modified interim requirements for advancement and graduation. Another important measure for building English-language competency was to reinstate the preparatory year that had been an essential feature of Anatolia’s prewar program, but was not continued by Koraïs School. Beginning with the 1945 entering class, all new students who were unable to pass an English-language test, the great majority at that time, embarked upon a seven-year curriculum. A hurdle to strengthening English instruction was the rapid turnover of teachers. Dean Compton considered the school’s most pressing problem to be the need for a permanent American English-teaching staff.3 A second challenge was to rebuild order and discipline among students who had experienced little schooling in recent years and were suddenly relocated from the city to the sprawling rural campus. In addition to academic grades, all students received conduct ratings covering over twenty criteria grouped under the headings of Truthfulness, Courtesy, Orderliness, Cooperation, and Promptness. For boarders, a twenty-page set of instructions prescribed proper behavior, including the expectation that, when leaving campus, they would maintain an upright posture, greet politely those whom they met, and be prepared to promptly assist anyone in need.4 All Anatolia students, male and female, were now located on the same campus, though carefully separated. Boys resumed classes in Macedonia Hall and residence in Minnesota and Alumni Halls. Makeshift arrangements for girls placed boarders on both sides of Panorama Road, tightly lodged in White and Morley Houses. For classrooms, female students used the converted German barracks next to Morley House and the hastily constructed shed adjoining it. When these proved inadequate, another small structure was erected nearby in the summer of 1946 to provide two more classrooms and a study hall. These make-do accommodations,



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

263

heated by wood or coal stoves, were intended to be temporary until proper facilities could be constructed. Shared premises included the temporary assembly hall and gym in the converted garage and the library in Macedonia Hall, both used separately by girls and boys. Theano Tiriki, alumna of 1931, resumed her long and devoted library service. Her formidable task was to restore the collection that had been decimated during the occupation. Through the assistance of alumni and friends of the College in recovering lost works, the library soon reached about ten thousand volumes.5 Not only was the Girls School now located permanently on the upper campus, but for the first time its graduates received diplomas equivalent to those awarded by the Boys School. Although the girls division had received government authorization of equivalency in 1938, none of its students reached graduation before the war intervened. Only from 1946 were Anatolia’s female graduates accorded certification qualifying them to take entrance examinations for the Greek universities.6 The first postwar graduation ceremony in 1946 was thus a very special occasion, marking the College’s revival as well as denoting the eligibility of its female students for university admission. The forty-four graduates, equally divided between young women and men, had actually attended Anatolia for only two years before the war and one year afterward. Koraïs School had served as the educational refuge for most of them during the hostilities. Despite their interrupted schooling, 1946 graduates excelled in their careers. The top-ranking graduate of the Girls School, Anna Michaelidou, earned a Ph.D. degree and became a professor of mathematics in Oregon. Her Boys School counterpart, Georgios Gotzamanis, headed a prominent architectural firm in Athens that designed Greek Embassy buildings, banks, and hotels. Classmate Nicholas Gonatas forged an outstanding career in neuropathology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.7 Another milestone for the Girls School had been the retirement of Bertha Morley and the appointment of Mary Ingle as dean for the entire school. Despite her fragile health, Morley’s career with Anatolia spanned twenty-eight years, including some of its most trying times. In assuming the dean’s duties, Mary Ingle continued a period of service begun in 1936 that proved to be no less devoted. By virtue of her forceful character and total commitment to her students, Ingle exerted influence that was not confined to the Girls School but extended throughout the College.8 One factor that might have been expected to limit student numbers was the reversal of the government’s measure from the Metaxas era extending high school to eight years, which had expanded Anatolia’s prewar enrollment. Secondary studies, for which foreign schools might be licensed,

264

Chapter 8

again spanned only six years (though Anatolia continued to require a preparatory year for most entering students). Despite this limitation and the dire economic conditions, by only the second year (1946–1947) the student body exceeded its highest prewar levels in reaching five hundred, of whom 152 were boarders. The reasons for this sharp increase were clearly those cited earlier by Iatrides when predicting a rising demand for Anatolia’s services, namely, the College’s reputation, the success of Koraïs School, a favorable public image of the United States, and the closing of the previously competitive German and Italian schools.9 Despite these advantages, the obstacles to Anatolia’s early reopening were formidable. Given that about two-thirds of the students were commuters from the city, the College had to provide transportation at a time when few reliable buses could be found. Solutions came chiefly through the acquisition and repair of former military vehicles, aged buses, and converted trucks. Graduates from these years recall with amusement the British “James” (JMS) trucks that brought them to school. Most of the bus and truck routes began and ended at the tram terminal in Harilaou near Anatolia’s former campus. The majority of commuting students, residing in or near the city center and taking the Harilaou tram, left home shortly after 6 a.m. and normally returned nearly twelve hours later.10 Restoring the academic program to respectable levels and enabling students to overcome deficiencies from the occupation years were essential goals, but only part of the task Anatolia’s leaders now embraced. No less essential was raising the morale and aspirations of young people who had endured years of fear and oppression. Some of the more extreme cases were described by Carl Compton when writing to the American Friends of Greece, an organization based in New York that provided scholarship assistance. One young student came to Anatolia from an orphanage after her parents were killed in their village near the town of Serres. Another was one of five destitute sisters whose father was lost after their village was destroyed during the war. A third had her face damaged by a grenade, was sent to the United States for plastic surgery, and returned to Anatolia. One young boy was an orphan who had fled from the distant town of Xanthi. Another saw his father and sister killed by the civil war violence and lost two fingers himself; he stuttered badly but gradually corrected his speech and passed the competitive examinations to enter the University of Thessaloniki. These were only a few of the moving instances cited by Dean Compton.11 The College adopted two main approaches for assisting its students to uplift their lives educationally, socially, and ethically. The first was to revive and expand the array of extracurricular activities that had always been an integral part of Anatolia’s offerings. The second was to encourage



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

265

student participation in humanitarian causes that aimed to restore health and stability to the larger society. In many instances, these two undertakings in practice merged into one. The standard Greek curriculum, supplemented at Anatolia by English and other special courses, required a total of thirty-six to thirty-eight class periods weekly over six days. By concentrating instruction mostly in the mornings, afternoons remained partly free for extracurricular pursuits. As before the war, these ranged from athletics to art, music, chorale, theater, journalism, correspondence, and student councils. This wide variety of opportunities for stirring imagination, encouraging talent and, most significant, building self-confidence, proved especially important following the bleak war years. Every school day began with an assembly, termed “Chapel,” where a Protestant hymn was followed by announcements and a brief lecture by a faculty member or visitor. A key purpose of Anatolia’s extracurricular dimension was to convey democratic concepts and procedures. Each class elected its student officers and faculty adviser and planned its nonacademic activities. An elected council represented the entire student body and negotiated its objectives with the faculty, who actively encouraged student initiatives. A special attraction of at least a few student activities, such as the Puppet Club, and the Press Club, which produced the College News, was to afford virtually the only contact between female and male students during the school day. A SPIRIT OF SERVICE The first postwar issue of The Anatolian, the school’s traditional yearbook, summarized the events of 1947–1948 and illustrated the revived school spirit. Its editor in chief, senior student Theodoseos Kontopoulos, explained that the publication had been no small task. Its cost had to be met by student contributions and commercial advertisements, both difficult under prevailing circumstances. Its foreword proclaimed: We are aware that the creative has always been stifled in times of national stress such as these through which we are passing. It is all the more imperative, therefore, that students and graduates of Anatolia College take advantage of their unique opportunity for self-expression, for expanding their minds and understanding in all directions, and that they determine to go out into every corner of Greece to be a powerful leaven of fearless judgment, honest dealings, and a spirit of service which extends not only to the community but to the country and to the whole world. These are the qualities for which Anatolia stands.12

266

Chapter 8

The “spirit of service” cited in The Anatolian found abundant outlets in a society passing from war to grievous civil war. The Girls Christian Efforts Club collected donations of food, medicine, and cash for destitute families. Its annual Christmas Bazaar drew income for that purpose from sales of artwork, pottery, embroideries, and other student creations prepared throughout the year. Another tradition, the Thanksgiving collection every November, provided food and clothing for children of nearby Hortiatis village, recovering from its wartime destruction. Contributions by Anatolia students provided classroom desks for the rebuilt village school, while a student team also made weekend trips to the village to distribute goods supplied by American relief organizations.13 Active partners in exemplifying the spirit of service for a new generation of students were Anatolia’s alumni. Girls School graduates formed an organization to provide meals, clothing, and medical care to children from destitute families encamped in basements and refugee quarters. Drawing assistance from relief organizations that had come to aid Greece during this troubled time, particularly UNICEF and the Congregational Christian Service, their operations expanded to serve hundreds of needy souls. Alumnae also established a nursery school to care for young children mostly from the distressed Kalamaria district. The College made available to the Alumni Welfare Committee the unburned portion of its Allatini property for a “feeding station” and nursery. During their free hours, Anatolia students assisted alumni in these efforts, thereby experiencing practical philanthropy at first hand. During summers, the alumnae brought groups of children from the hot city for camping sessions on the cooler campus, where other organizations such as the YWCA and the Girl Guides were also welcomed. Until well into the 1950s, Anatolia undertook to import quantities of food, used clothing, and other scarce necessities from America, donated in many cases by charitable agencies, for distribution by the Student Christian Association and the Alumni Welfare Committee. The Alumni Association resumed its prewar activities in downtown Thessaloniki, providing a meeting place for graduates and raising funds for College scholarships. Its most notable innovation was the founding of a language school that came to enroll as many as five hundred students, mostly adults, to meet the demands for English and secretarial training. This Extension Department, legitimized through a license held by the College, also provided teaching employment for many alumni.14 Ernest Riggs and Orestes Iatrides entertained even greater ambitions for the downtown operation. They envisioned an institution, modeled on the liberal arts college, training high school graduates in subjects such as history, international relations, social science, ethics, economics, and business studies. Their intent was to reproduce the educational formula



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

267

Anatolia employed in Merzifon and had tried without success to revive in Thessaloniki in the late 1930s through a Free Studies option in the last secondary years (see chapter 6). A return to that model in the form of an adult learning center that would not award degrees and therefore presumably be legally permissible seemed so promising that Iatrides wrote to the trustees that it might even come to surpass the secondary school. Riggs included the cost of a building for this purpose in his financial plan, approved by the trustees, and found a promising site in the city’s central Ayia Sofia Square. However, hopes to broaden Anatolia’s offerings through a liberal arts dimension were again dashed, partly for financial reasons that will be explained. The disparity between its American educators’ aspirations and the state-mandated curriculum remained a major concern throughout Anatolia’s years in Greece.15 ENDURING CIVIL WAR The Nazi withdrawal had left Greece not only wrecked and impoverished but with a political void that opposing forces rushed to fill. More than a century of independence had failed to produce a model of government that could command the trust and cooperation of its citizenry. At a time when effective rule was essential to heal the wounds of war and engineer social and economic recovery, the nation’s politics became increasingly fractured. Rightist forces with British support sought to revive the preMetaxas monarchy. They met widespread opposition from republican and leftist elements emboldened by their success in organizing a wartime resistance army and seizing control of much of rural Greece during the occupation. The deepening divide reflected conflicting ideologies, local rivalries, and unresolved grievances from the war years and before. Early postwar elections were flawed, the mandate of the Athens government carried little weight in many districts, and regional contenders used violent means to exact vengeance and seize power. Widespread local conflicts crystallized into a countrywide struggle between right and left against a background of institutional paralysis. Both sides sought and received assistance from foreign powers, further polarizing the contest, heightening its ideological character, and raising the stakes. Greece thus became one of the first battle zones of the Cold War. Immediately following the country’s liberation in October 1944, Britain played a decisive role in bolstering the Greek Government of National Unity and intervened with armed force to prevent the establishment of a leftist regime in Athens. With British and UNRRA assistance, a succession of Greek governments struggled to rebuild a war-torn infrastructure,

268

Chapter 8

provide relief to a starving population, and establish law and order across the country. After 1946, as Britain curtailed its involvement in Greece while a communist insurgency was on the rise, the future of the country appeared to be in doubt. It was largely through military and economic aid from the United States that Greek nationalist forces were finally able to prevail over the insurgents in the mountains of northwestern Greece in 1949. Anatolia’s reopening in the fall of 1945 coincided with a brief calm in the political strife that occupied most of the decade. A compromise reached by the country’s main political forces early that year, the Varkiza Agreement, led to elections in March 1946 that produced a broad coalition government followed by a plebiscite that fall restoring the monarchy. However, passionate antipathies among adversaries unable to agree on basic tenets of governance while seeking their own aggrandizement quickly returned the country to turmoil. When Greece descended into civil war in late 1946, Thessaloniki, like most other major towns, suffered less from the savage conflict than the countryside, where law and order dissolved as armed bands raided villages and drove new waves of refugees to the cities. At the same time, the city’s location near mountainous terrain where guerrilla units operated and only fifty miles from the border with Yugoslavia, which for a time served as a refuge for rebel forces, sustained high levels of tension and anxiety.16 Anatolia endeavored throughout these difficult years to provide a secure environment where its students could pursue their education as untroubled as possible by the widespread conflict. It offered a haven particularly for boarders from troubled districts, though problems sometimes arose when they traveled at vacation time to their homes in the provinces. On one occasion, a convoy including a bus taking Anatolia students home for Christmas was attacked by guerrillas, and its passengers had to be safeguarded overnight in a nearby village. Other students brought back horrific accounts of violent acts against their homes and families. As civil strife intensified and guerrilla attacks increased, Anatolia’s location well beyond the city became more hazardous, as illustrated by an incident in early 1949 at the American Farm School only three miles distant. A guerrilla band descended one night to seize forty-one male students and staff and marched them into the surrounding hills. Most of the group escaped their captors without harm after only a few days, although the last returned two months later. Given Anatolia’s similarly exposed location, it is not surprising that this episode prompted a number of parents, especially those residing in Thessaloniki, to remove their children from the College dormitories to the safety of the city, though very few were actually withdrawn from the school.



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

269

Fortunately for Anatolia, it encountered no comparable incident, partly, no doubt, because a British military unit remained stationed on the campus until 1949. The Greek army also posted guards to monitor movement between the area of the campus and the city. Still, the war raging only some miles away could not be other than ominous, especially when shelling by rebel forces from the hills above could be clearly heard. Travel beyond the school was undertaken only with precautions.17 Anatolia experienced in many ways the distress created by the civil war. A former student, Vasilis Papastavrou, son of former Anatolia professor Ioannis Papastavrou and an officer with the government forces, was lost in battle. Friends from Anatolia and the University of Thessaloniki, where Vasilis later studied, were instrumental in having a square named for him in the border village of Promachon. Nor were the College’s teachers, Greek and American, immune to the war’s dangers. Lois Riess spent her youthful years in Thessaloniki where her father directed the YMCA. She returned after the war to teach English at Anatolia, where she married Nikolas Kerimis, an Anatolia teacher of French. En route to Thessaloniki from Athens in 1948, their plane was hijacked by young Greek rebels who diverted it to Communist Yugoslavia. The passengers endured many ordeals before ultimately returning safely to Thessaloniki.18 It was Anatolia’s Greek teachers who bore the greatest burden in reviving the College. Dean Compton praised their marvelous spirit: “They have had to face rising costs with totally inadequate salaries. Many have been ill for longer or shorter periods, and those who were well have tried to carry on the work of their absent colleagues. Four teachers have been called to military service. . . . But, in spite of all these difficulties, our teachers have carried on with a loyalty and devotion which have been a great inspiration.” Compton concluded that Anatolia’s prestige in the community was largely due to the strong and steady work of its Greek staff.19 An incident that drew worldwide attention claimed an Anatolia graduate as one of its victims. As the civil war raged, an enterprising American journalist, George Polk, arrived in Thessaloniki in 1948 with the intent of gaining an interview with the Communist chief, Markos Vafiades, in his mountain headquarters. Among Polk’s contacts in Thessaloniki happened to be Gregorios Staktopoulos ’30, who as a refugee youth from the Pontus region of Asia Minor had studied at Anatolia on a scholarship and later became an aspiring journalist. When Polk was found murdered, Staktopoulos, on the slimmest of evidence, was tried and convicted as an accomplice in a leftist conspiracy and given a lifetime prison sentence, receiving a pardon only in 1960. Carl Compton testified as a character witness in his defense. The crime produced strong reverberations in the United States, due in part to the prominence of Polk’s family; there

270

Chapter 8

continues to be an annual George Polk award for outstanding journalism. Although the passage of time and scholarly research have caused Staktopoulos’s conviction to be seen as a miscarriage of justice, repeated efforts to reverse the decision have not met with success before the Greek judiciary.20 Indiscriminate political stigmatization during these perilous years claimed many victims, including Anatolia personnel. George Vourdas, teacher of Greek and Latin, was apprehended for alleged leftist sympathies in 1947 and deported by authorities to an Aegean island. Fortunately, he was soon released and resumed teaching duties. The College gave Vourdas a promotion the following year, and he continued his successful career until retirement.21 Although the civil war ended in 1949 with the defeat of the left, political polarization continued to cast shadows over the country’s struggle for recovery. Postwar rightist governments mobilized police, the judiciary, and other security forces to punish or marginalize those identified as supporters of the rebel cause. Considerations of justice were frequently outweighed by ideological prejudices and personal enmities. Entire families might be stigmatized for the real or assumed actions of a single member. While Anatolia made every effort to eschew the political strife of those years, its Greek personnel remained vulnerable. An early example was Socrates Eleftheriades, who upon graduating from Anatolia in 1930 had joined its staff as librarian. He continued in that capacity when the school reopened, together with Theano Tiriki, and was given the rank of assistant professor following studies in the United States. But when his dentist brother was charged with pro-Communist leanings, Socrates heeded warnings by departing in 1954 for California, where he continued his library career. His enduring attachment to the College is evidenced today by the high school library bearing his name in recognition of the financial contribution by Socrates and his wife, Olga Mavrophidou, former teacher of Greek at Anatolia.22 During these years and beyond, Anatolia provided a haven for personnel who faced political harassment. As the College expanded and enlarged its faculty in the 1950s and after, some of its most able and devoted teachers came to Anatolia because they could not gain employment in public schools due to their political backgrounds, real or perceived. Anatolia’s efforts to create an environment both tranquil and stimulating, where adolescents of all social classes might discover and develop their talents, were illustrated by the experience of Antonis Papadopoulos, a member of the first entering class following the war. The son of Asia Minor refugees who lost his father at an early age, Antonis resided with his mother in one of the shabby settlements of the Toumba district. Upon completing elementary school, he was encouraged to apply to Anatolia,



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

271

scored high on its entrance exams, and was awarded a scholarship supported by the American Friends of Greece based in New York. Among its conditions were campus chores requiring from about sixty to ninety minutes daily. Graduating in 1952, Papadopoulos today believes that Anatolia changed his life. He praises his teachers for close attention to their students’ needs, for their respect and friendship. Whatever their political beliefs during that troubled period, he recalls, they did not intrude them into the classroom. Distinctions of wealth or social background among students were of little consequence. The school’s atmosphere was so compelling that Antonis remained on campus well after the end of classes for athletics and other activities before the long walk home in the early evening. He particularly remembers the ample library, not to be found in other Greek schools, where he read Greek literature voraciously and prepared English-language assignments; the morning chapel with its engaging speakers; and the International Relations Club. It was through such clubs and athletic teams, administered by elected fellow students, that he learned democratic procedures and respect for his peers. He stresses also the strong work ethic essential for success at Anatolia. Upon graduation, Antonis passed entrance examinations for the University of Thessaloniki, obtained degrees in economics and law, and launched a long and successful career. He speaks of a “deep psychic attachment” to Anatolia that holds firm today.23 FINANCIAL CHALLENGES The economic deprivation afflicting the country during the civil war and immediately afterward could not but impact Anatolia heavily. Not only was poverty widespread, but conventional mediums of exchange became dysfunctional as the official currency lost its value. Prices soared, with food and other necessities in short supply. Fortunately, the College was able to acquire limited quantities of scarce goods customs free through the U.S. Embassy in Athens for distribution among its staff through a campus “commissary.” Some parents even paid part of tuition in the form of commodities or services. Tuition payments had always been Anatolia’s main source of income, though they covered only a portion of expenses. Since the Merzifon years, about one-third of the student body received full or partial scholarships. Applications for such assistance were now legion. In addition to funds to balance its operating budget and provide scholarships, the College urgently needed new resources to properly accommodate the Girls School on the Pylea campus. The makeshift arrangements permitting classes to resume in 1945 after the loss of its Allatini Street building remained far

272

Chapter 8

from satisfactory. It was essential that more and better quality classrooms and dormitories be provided as quickly as possible. An ambitious plan prepared by an American architect envisioned a separate girls campus consisting of as many as eight new buildings on the other side of the Panorama Road from the Boys School. But the missing element was funding.24 Ernest Riggs now embraced this challenge, with the consequence that about half of his last five years as president (1945–1950) were spent in the United States, leaving Deans Compton and Ingle to head the College’s administration. Riggs faced a number of drawbacks. Unlike his predecessor, George White, he lacked a strong home base for cultivating supporters. Born and raised in Merzifon, he had lived in the Near East for most of his working years. Residing now part-time in Massachusetts where Anatolia was incorporated, he was ill positioned to resume and expand the sources of support that White had developed over many years from his home district in the Midwest. Anatolia’s fundraising efforts had lapsed during the war years since the school was closed and other priorities had claimed the attention of former or potential donors. Riggs thus confronted daunting hurdles when endeavoring to rebuild a fundraising organization with a network of committed supporters. The misadventure that ensued illustrates how exacting were the demands upon the president and trustees for funding a school in a distant land. The College’s operating budget for several years after the war amounted to something over $100,000 annually. Of that sum, approximately three-quarters now came from tuition and boarding fees. The remainder, in addition to virtually all funding for new or improved facilities, had to be supplied mostly from the United States, either as income from the institution’s capital endowment or through donations. Grants during the early postwar years from the Greek War Relief Organization and the American Friends of Greece were most helpful, the latter having provided at least twenty-three scholarships for war orphans, but could not be expected to continue. Overtures for U.S. government funding through the State Department’s Division of Cultural Cooperation failed to yield positive results.25 The endowment, consisting of several separate accounts held by the College and by the ABCFM on its behalf, amounted in 1945 to approximately $500,000, well over half of it originating from the prewar grant from the Charles M. Hall estate. Annual income from those holdings averaged about $25,000, barely enough to meet the required stateside contribution to the school’s budget but by no means sufficient to finance an expanded campus. Some accumulated income from the war years was mostly consumed by start-up costs. A building fund for the Girls School stood at only $11,000.26



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

273

Pursuing the dream of an entire new campus for Anatolia’s female contingent as well as further development of the Boys School, including library, gymnasium, science building, auditorium, music hall, staff housing, and also a downtown center, Riggs, with the concurrence of the Board, initiated a quest for funds with the ambitious goal of $1 million, twice the amount of the endowment. Hazel T. Wilson, a trustee from Chicago, was employed to direct a nationwide campaign with regional committees and mass mailings. To assist with the ambitious effort, a public relations firm in Boston, Harris-Mann Associates, was engaged. Ernest and Alice Riggs traveled tirelessly to speak about Anatolia. Major occasions included concerts in Boston, Chicago, and New York’s Carnegie Hall under the famous Greek conductor, Dimitris Mitropoulos, who donated his services. Orthodox Archbishop Athenagoras and alumnus Athanasios Aghnides, then Greece’s envoy to the UN, addressed audiences. Results over the next two years proved sadly disappointing as the campaign produced only $43,000 in revenues, whereas its costs totaled almost $80,000. Riggs, in a report to the trustees, called it a “disaster.” The services of Harris-Mann were terminated after only six months with expenses of $50,000. When the replacement of Mrs. Wilson as campaign director in 1947 did not lead to improvement, a third director took over. A commission agent in New York assigned to solicit contributions from Greek ship owners fared better, though the amounts were comparatively small. Anatolia’s financial condition was described in the trustee minutes as a “plight” and a “crisis.” In light of these developments, and on the advice of trustee Donald J. Cowling, former president of Carleton College, to the effect that Anatolia lacked a sufficiently broad constituency to justify so large a campaign, the effort was drastically downscaled and most of its staff dismissed. Campaign costs, in addition to expenditures for urgently needed improvements to the campus, though far more modest than envisioned, produced a combined deficit in Boston and Thessaloniki reaching over $95,000 by 1950. To meet the shortfall, the trustees were obliged to draw from the endowment while also incurring debts of over $65,000 to the ABCFM and for bank loans, which were repaid only over several years.27 It was largely due to this disappointment that Anatolia’s Board adopted an alternative approach to fundraising intended to produce better results with less expense. The Near East College Association (NECA) had been founded before the war to assist American schools serving that region. A nonprofit organization based in New York, its rationale centered on the assumption that it could reach a larger constituency and serve its members more productively and at lower cost than each could do on its own. Besides funding, its services included recruitment of teachers and

274

Chapter 8

staff, purchase and shipment of supplies, and other administrative functions. Not all American schools in the region elected to join, a principal reservation being that in representing its members collectively, NECA would have difficulty projecting each one’s individual character and distinctive mission when seeking support. Ernest Riggs and Mary Ingle both expressed reservations about Anatolia joining the group. But in the wake of Anatolia’s recent financial setback, the Board welcomed a new approach and formalized NECA membership in 1950.28 CARL COMPTON, DEAN AND PRESIDENT In 1950 Ernest Riggs concluded a career of over forty years in mission service. During the last five years, he had labored under conditions of civil war and minimal resources to restore Anatolia, with the constant support of Alice Shepard Riggs. In retirement he continued efforts to find needed resources for the College, helping to consolidate the new relationship with NECA and traveling widely to seek support. It was on such a fundraising trip to Texas just two years later that he suffered a heart attack, at age seventy, from which he did not recover. Alice Riggs assumed his post as trustee and continued the vigorous work for Anatolia that the couple had long pursued together.29 Carl Compton quite naturally succeeded Riggs as Anatolia’s fifth president. Given the widespread respect he enjoyed, no alternative prospect was seriously considered. Compton himself expressed certain reservations, chiefly concerning the fundraising duties of the office, though it may have been anticipated at the time that these would become less onerous following Anatolia’s membership in NECA. Compton saw his major role as that of educator. He did not relish the prospect of being absent from campus duties for extended periods or of soliciting funds. One American colleague who taught at Anatolia on two separate occasions under his tutelage wrote: “Out of a sense of duty, not preference, Carl became president, but always and basically he was a dean, not so much of education but of boys, setting a standard for the school and orienting the compass of many a boy on his way to manhood.”30 President Compton assumed the school’s management at a trying time with urgent needs for improvements to the physical plant despite financial stringencies. He brought long experience as well as exceptional personal discipline to the formidable task. One of his first measures of economy was to assume the responsibilities of both president and dean of the Boys School, thereby saving an administrative salary. Since there was no business manager at that time, he initially took on most of those



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

275

functions as well. During the early years of his presidency, his duties encompassed virtually the full range of administrative supervision. They extended even to placing orders for food, supplies, and equipment from the United States, an onerous chore necessitated by the scarcity and high prices of these items on the Greek market and by Anatolia’s exemption from import duties. In addition to the foregoing responsibilities, he continued to teach one or two courses, usually psychology or hygiene. It should be noted that Compton’s appointment marked the end of the tradition of Anatolia’s president being an ordained Protestant minister, although he did hold a master’s degree in theology from Oberlin College.31 Although Compton is remembered more as a man of deeds than of words, his oral and written expression was exceptionally clear and persuasive. This was evidenced by his compelling message to Anatolia’s trustees upon his election to the presidency just as the Greek civil war had ended: It is one of the tragedies of Greece that at this time of crisis her educational system has suffered such devastating blows. Thousands of schools have been completely or partially wrecked; furnishings and equipment are gone; books, paper, pencils are practically non-existent; and the surviving teachers are far too few in number. The Greeks have always been great believers in education and they are doing what they can to restore their shattered school system; but the needs are so great, and their national resources have been so diminished that they need and desire our help. Our government, recognizing the strategic importance of Greece, is helping in material reconstruction; but it has not included aid to education in its program. That has been left to the Greek people themselves and to private institutions like Anatolia College. At Anatolia College we are trying to combine the best elements of both Greek and American educational programs and methods. There are certain great values in the Greek system which we hope to preserve, but we also believe there are certain American emphases which would be of great help to Greece. For one thing, we feel that Greek young people could profit by more emphasis upon understanding and using the scientific method. Basically this is simply an honest search for facts, and a readiness to guide actions by carefully assembled facts rather than by impulse or prejudice. Another contribution we are trying to make is in the development of a strong sense of social responsibility. We try to make our students realize that schools are supported not only for the benefit of individual students, but also for the service those individuals will render to their communities and their nation. Students are encouraged to share in various forms of campus and community service and to recognize individual responsibility to join with others in working for the welfare of the group. And this group activity is to be in accordance with democratically determined ends and methods, in which each individual has his say, but majority rule prevails.

276

Chapter 8

President-elect Compton observed that Anatolia’s students “represent all classes and conditions, from destitute orphans to the sons and daughters of the rich. As they work and play together in the happy comradeship of school life, all distinctions other than those established by character and ability soon disappear.” He concluded with this observation: The great hope for the future of Greece lies in the vitality and resiliency and unconquerable spirit of the great rank and file of the Greek people, and particularly of the young people. If we continue to stand back of them in this time of reconstruction I am confident they will continue to be an outpost for democracy in that very strategic part of the world. And granted peace, we shall see them build in Greece today a civilization worthy of their ancestry.32

Compton’s eight years as president marked the culminating phase of his long service with Anatolia begun in 1913. He and the College faced four main challenges as Greece began the healing process following a decade of war and civil strife. The most urgent was to provide adequate facilities for the Girls School, which for five years had been housed in makeshift quarters intended to be only temporary. Directly related was the need to restore health to the College’s finances. Hardly less important was strengthening the faculty to meet increased enrollment and attain higher levels of performance. The fourth task was to invigorate the school spirit and shape students’ values for their own personal enrichment and for the betterment of the larger society. A NEW GIRLS CAMPUS Anatolia’s campus with its splendid location and fine stone buildings erected for the Boys School in the early 1930s was one of the finest in Greece. The Girls School, after moving in haste in 1945 from its charred Allatini site, had been accommodated for several years mainly in the small quadrangle of former barracks and provisional sheds adjoining the Boys School. Insufficient acreage and funding delayed development of the campus for girls on its designated site across the Panorama road.33 To overcome the first obstacle of restricted space, several contiguous parcels had to be purchased. First was the tract bordering the Panorama road on the south, still owned by George D. White, though used by Anatolia, with the substantial house he had erected before the war. White House again served as a girls dormitory as it had briefly in October 1940. The property included two other structures. The larger was Personnel (later Willard) House, built in stages from the mid-1940s, using materials salvaged from the Allatini premises. Dean Mary Ingle first resided there together with members of the Girls School faculty. The other was the



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

277

sturdy chicken coop built by White and modified after the war. Dubbed the “cottage,” it housed teachers for several years. Anatolia acquired ownership of the White property and also purchased several contiguous lots totaling about ten acres during the first postwar decade. These complex transactions, including the securing of special permission to acquire property in this restricted region, were managed by alumnus Socrates Iakovides ’28. This able lawyer who had assisted Compton with his UNRRA duties served as Anatolia’s legal adviser from 1945 until his death in 1973.34 The need for expanded facilities became especially urgent in anticipation of the 1951 fall term. Since there would be no graduating class the previous spring (see endnote 3), enrollments in both the Girls and Boys Schools were due to increase by two class sections totaling over one hundred students. Even though funding constraints weighed heavily, it was deemed essential to proceed with the limited means in hand, only about $33,000. The administration, with Board approval, decided to immediately construct the ground floors of two new classroom buildings, saving dormitory facilities for later. A local architect devised far more modest plans than those prepared earlier in the United States. Fofo (Sofia) Engonopoulou Karalia ’53 recalls her class being relocated temporarily in the boys chemistry room in Macedonia Hall at the beginning of the 1951– 1952 school year amid the influx of new students, before moving that winter into the new George White Memorial Building, still surrounded by construction materials. She also remembers how the enthusiasm of her classmates in occupying the new building far outweighed any temporary inconvenience.35 The second of the two adjacent buildings, named in honor of Ernest Riggs, was ready for classes in the fall of 1952. The cost of the two structures, slightly under $100,000 including furnishings, was raised partly through donations but also by borrowing from the endowment. They encompassed fourteen regular classrooms and two areas outfitted for teaching home economics. Anatolia girls again had their own campus, though they still crossed the road to use the library, art studio, science laboratories, and Orthodox chapel in Macedonia Hall. A further result was to free up space to meet other needs for the expanding enrollment. The German-built stone barracks used as the main classroom building for the girls was remodeled as an auditorium. In addition, several Quonset huts on the campus’s western fringe vacated by the British in 1949 had been adapted to Anatolia’s needs, with one of the larger structures serving as an improvised gymnasium. It proved possible even to accommodate a small primary school for the children of American and British officials. The first fifteen students entered “Piney Woods School” in 1950 under the supervision of Millicent

278

Chapter 8

Kent, wife of Anatolia’s English department head, with two alumnae as teachers. Attention turned again to a girls dormitory that would also include a kitchen and dining room, reception hall, recreation room, faculty offices, infirmary, and auxiliary spaces. Mary Ingle traveled to the United States in 1954 to seek funds, with some success, returning for the same purpose the following year. Carl and Ruth Compton made similar efforts during the winter of 1956–1957. As the school continued to wrestle with yearly deficits, support for this essential facility in the amount of $80,000 was secured from the U.S. Department of State under Public Law 480. That law authorized the use of “counterpart funds,” that is, foreign currencies held abroad by the U.S. government, for approved purposes. In Greece, the sale of surplus agricultural products had created such holdings in drachmas, which now became available to American nonprofit schools serving the Greek public. This was the first in a series of grants extending over several decades that enabled Anatolia to expand and improve its campus. The full cost of constructing and furnishing the multipurpose building was approximately $210,000, the largest part of which came from private contributions. The ground floor was ready to receive thirty-six resident students by the fall of 1957. Despina Lazaridou ’34 assumed responsibility as “housemother,” while Despina Triantafilidou Amarantidou, wife of Lazaros Amarantidis, who oversaw construction of the Girls School buildings, served as “matron” for their care and feeding. An Anatolia alumna of 1940, she had trained in dietetics at Montana State College. The remaining female boarders moved from White House the following year when the second floor was ready to accommodate another thirtysix students as well as resident faculty. The third of the postwar buildings completing the new girls campus was given the tentative name “Olympus Hall.” Construction of the girls campus was an impressive feat, considering the school’s paucity of resources and the pressures for early completion. Much of the accomplishment was due to the skill and economy of Lazaros Amarantidis. To be sure, its brick and stucco buildings could not match in quality or appearance the stone structures on the boys campus opposite, though they compared very well with other local schools. They enclosed a courtyard surrounded by trees and gardens with adjoining athletic fields and a fine view toward the city. A Ministry of Education committee that inspected the facilities reported that they “were a jewel for the city of Thessaloniki.” Moreover, the relocation of boarders from White and Morley Houses permitted those buildings to be remodeled as faculty residences for which there was great need.36



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

279

BALANCING THE BUDGET Upon assuming the presidency, Compton faced a precarious financial situation: a deficit in Anatolia’s operations in Greece and stateside debts exceeding $100,000, nearly the amount of the school’s annual budget. Fundraising efforts in the United States remained weak as the trustees, though conscientious in their oversight role, were less active in seeking funds for the school. The decision to assign promotional activities to NECA failed to produce the anticipated income. Disappointing results led to a revision of responsibilities in 1955; henceforth, NECA would provide mostly administrative services, whereas the associated schools resumed major responsibility for finding donor support. Trustee Hiram Sibley oversaw the new Anatolia Promotion Committee, while Mrs. Elizabeth Scarlatos was employed as its secretary based in New York with NECA. Among her principal tasks was to publicize Anatolia through a newsletter and other materials promoting the College. Those efforts produced few significant improvements. A New York fundraising firm advised the College in 1958 that its annual campaign was of insufficient scope to justify either that firm’s consultancy or the appointment of a full-time employee.37 President Compton did not feel he could absent himself often from the school for long periods to pursue fundraising, though he conducted extensive correspondence with donors in the United States. Long accustomed to managing with minimal resources under trying circumstances, he naturally adopted a Spartan approach to the school’s administration. Personally demonstrating the need for frugality, he allowed little or no difference between his remuneration as president and that of other senior staff while tirelessly shouldering an endless range of duties throughout his twelve-hour working days. His chief assistant in this demanding task came to be Prodromos Ebeoglou, alumnus and staff member since the 1920s who, together with Orestes Iatrides, had largely managed the transition from Koraïs School in 1945. Ebeoglou applied his long experience to coping with the endless issues involved in operating a foreign school on the outskirts of a beleaguered city during civil and economic strife, first as registrar and later (1953) as business manager. These tasks demanded a close familiarity with ways of doing business in Greece that his American colleagues could not be expected to command. They included relations with parents often unable to meet tuition payments; transactions with banks, contractors, suppliers, landowners, customs offices, and working staff; and rendering satisfaction to sometimes unsympathetic educational officials. An unstable drachma and high rates of inflation required the College to find adaptive strategies, such as holding a portion of its finances in gold

280

Chapter 8

sovereigns. Managing successfully these many demands required tried and tested skills as well as unquestioned loyalty to the College. Ebeoglou proved to be a master in managing the school’s finances, generating resources and gradually reducing the deficit. His methods were exacting as well as crafty in dealing with what Bill Compton, Carl and Ruth’s son who grew up in Thessaloniki and returned to teach English in 1952, described as the “grey areas” of financial management. One example of Ebeoglou’s ingenuity was an undertaking with Kostas Tsitsiringos, a shepherd in nearby Arsakli. The latter was given a loan to set up a butcher shop, agreeing in return to supply Anatolia’s dormitories with lamb and mutton at reasonable rates for a specified number of years. The Tsitsiringos shop continues to flourish in today’s Panorama. Despite President Compton’s recognition of certain “personality factors that rub people the wrong way,” he came to rely upon Ebeoglou and allowed him to exercise authority in many areas of College life.38 One of Ebeoglou’s leading accomplishments was persuading the Thessaloniki Chamber of Commerce to found the Association of the Friends of Anatolia College in 1948. Local companies and businessmen pledged annual contributions for scholarships to children whose families were victims of the civil war. Substantial donations by the “Friends,” while helping to relieve the College’s deficit, enabled worthy students of modest means to attend Anatolia. That deficit inevitably made its mark on student financial assistance. Anatolia had endeavored over the years to provide full or partial aid to about one-third of its students. This proportion fell to about one-quarter in the mid-1950s despite substantial grants from the American Educational (Fulbright) Foundation, which in 1956 funded over 40 percent of Anatolia’s student aid. Scholarship support came also from the Pan-Macedonian Association in the United States.39 Another important benefit for reducing school expenses came from Greek legislation in 1949 granting tax-free privileges to the newly formed American Council of Voluntary Agencies. Anatolia was among the founding members of this association composed of U.S. private, nonprofit organizations providing educational, charitable, and health services to assist the country’s recovery following the civil war. Membership relieved the school of most tax obligations, including heavy duties on a wide range of imported goods, while its American personnel were exempt from Greek income tax. Yet another development that enhanced the value of contributions from the United States was the sharp devaluation of the drachma in 1953. Other savings were realized from the campus printing operation. A new press produced materials more cheaply than local printers did and met the College’s needs for English-language materials while also giving work to students.40



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

281

At the conclusion of Compton’s eight-year presidency, the treasurer of the Board reported that the deficit had been eliminated. Strict financial management had produced this result at the same time as the new Girls School campus was nearing completion—an extraordinary achievement. Many needs still remained, as enumerated by Compton in one of his final reports to the trustees, but the school was now on much firmer ground financially.41 A REJUVENATED FACULTY The Greek educators who labored for the College’s postwar restoration formed the nucleus of an expanding faculty. Orestes Iatrides remained senior adviser to the president and teacher until retiring in 1962. Lambros Pararas served as Greek director of the Boys School until his retirement in 1958. His counterpart in the Girls School, Olga Platiridou, also continued her service from the Koraïs years, as did art teacher George Paralis. The mathematics department was anchored under Lambros Papademetriou, who taught in both schools. On the girls side, Evdokia Ebeoglou-Bakalaki led the teaching of modern and classical Greek subjects while Marika Kontozoglou remained the mainstay in physical education. Younger teachers would have to be prepared eventually to succeed them and to accommodate the expanding student body that reached six hundred by the mid-1950s. The need for personnel sharpened when Vasilis Liatsos, head of the English department, departed in 1949 to found a private elementary school, joined subsequently by religion teacher Hatzimatheou. Their departure illustrated rising opportunities for educators with an entrepreneurial bent as Greece returned to postwar normalcy.42 In recruiting faculty, Anatolia enjoyed the advantages of its handsome campus and relatively attractive salaries. It was also served well by its location near Thessaloniki, a benefit for young Greek teachers who, if appointed to the public service, normally were required to begin their careers in remote villages and often at poorly appointed schools. On the other hand, Anatolia bore the stigma attached to private education in Greece. State regulations treated private schools as of lower standing than their public counterparts and conveyed that impression to the public. Whereas public school teachers were assured of such benefits as minimum salaries, pensions, and terminal bonuses, private schools at this time were not legally required to provide the same. A consequence was that beginning teachers frequently took positions at private schools, only to resign once their appointment to the public service materialized. Another common practice at this time was for able and ambitious scholars aspiring to university careers to begin at the secondary level. For

282

Chapter 8

example, Apostolos Vakalopoulos taught at Anatolia from 1946 to 1950 before gaining appointment to the University of Thessaloniki, where he became one of the most acclaimed historians of Greece. Similar career strategies were followed by language and literature teachers George Bakalakis (Anatolia 1945–1952), Christos Frangos (1951–1964) and Nikolaos Hourmouziades (1954–1965), as well as Sophocles Karavelas in physics (1954–1961). Students benefitted from instruction by such outstanding young scholars, whose subsequent university distinction reflected favorably upon the College. On the other hand, their departure could be disruptive to Anatolia’s endeavors to build a stable faculty.43 Anatolia asked more of its teachers, expecting them to be devoted to the school and its mission and to develop a strong attachment to their students. They assumed broader responsibilities than at public schools and remained more hours on campus. Moreover, during this aftermath of the civil war, when political passions remained intense in the larger society, it was essential that Anatolia cultivate democratic convictions on the part of its students while eschewing political controversy. It relied chiefly upon its senior Greek teachers to set the model for balance in the classroom and to instill in their students mutual respect and aversion to narrow prejudices. Beyond their teaching assignments of approximately twenty-five hours weekly, Anatolia teachers were required to lead extracurricular pursuits, serve as student advisers, and participate in campus events. Qualities of character and personal culture weighed heavily in their appointment and retention. The first three years were normally a trial period, after which those selected for permanent service were designated “Career Members,” signifying tenure of employment and eligibility for an American-based annuity supplementing the Greek state pension. In 1956, three-quarters of the Greek faculty were Career Members. The College also rewarded faculty for meeting its high expectations, by a salary differential that in some years could reach as much as one-third. Nonetheless, staff remuneration remained a constant concern as salaries perennially fell behind prices during years of sharp monetary inflation.44 A cohort of young teachers who joined Anatolia during the early postwar years served to anchor its faculty for the next three to four decades. Margarita Kyriazi-Falari began at Koraïs School before embarking upon her long service at Anatolia (1945–1981) as physics teacher and, in her later years, Girls School director. Nikolas Papahadzis, widely recognized scholar, became the leading instructor in classical history. He was joined by Anastasios Georgopapadakos, experienced in teaching Greek history and language, who succeeded Pararas as Boys School director. Also assigned to teach Greek language and literature in the Boys School was Vaios Baglanis (1957), while Venetia Hatzizani-Papadopoulou, Kat-



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

283

erina Iatridou-Godhi, Anastasia Oikonomidou-Baglani, and Athanasia Atesoglou-Dimitriadou strengthened the corresponding department in the Girls School. Anatolia’s mathematics department was boosted by new appointees Konstantinos Botsakis, Dimitris Evstratiades, Maria Zika, and Aristidis Kyriakakis. Anastasios Pappas brought inspiration to musical instruction and to organizing corresponding events. The physical education dimension in the Boys School was bolstered by the appointment of Christos Chryssis and Vasilis Attaliades. These figures formed the nucleus of an expanded teaching staff that served the College through the postwar era and well beyond. One appointment that differed from the usual pattern was that of Demetrios Karademos, who left public school teaching in midcareer to assume supervision of Anatolia’s physics department in 1953. An alumnus of that year, Nicholas Gallopoulos, who later became head of Engine Research at General Motors Corporation in Detroit, recalls that science instruction up until that time was purely theoretical; equipment for teaching physics was minimal and for chemistry nonexistent. As Karademos described it, teaching was done by “word, chalk and blackboard.” Encouraged by President Compton, he set out to create the finest secondary school laboratories in Greece, with equipment imported from abroad, and authored the first laboratory guide for high school chemistry. Karademos’s enthusiasm drew other inspired teachers, including Georgios Ioannides, who helped to assemble the labs and authored a physics manual before his untimely death. With a strong faculty and laboratories, the College was able to add in 1954 an optional “practical” (math and science) concentration to the last two years of the program.45 Anatolia assigned high priority to the continuing education of its faculty and assisted teachers to gain scholarships to American institutions. Examples include Marika Kontozoglou, who did graduate work in gymnastics at Smith College; Lambros Pararas, who studied at Columbia University’s Teachers College; gymnast Vasilis Attaliades, who trained for a year at Springfield College; Dimitris Efstratiades, who earned a master’s degree in mathematics from Ohio State University; and religion teacher Constantine Nouskas, who enrolled at Vanderbilt University’s School of Divinity.46 Among the top priorities was the teaching of English and Anglo-American culture. Assembling an able faculty posed a particular challenge during the postwar years. A tight budget could not provide salaries that were competitive in the United States or meet international transportation costs. Few Greek teachers of English could satisfy Anatolia’s requirements. A notable exception was Bernice Kalogeropoulou, who had attended high school in St. Louis, Missouri, before returning to Greece, the only English teacher appointed during the first decade after the war to complete a full career at Anatolia.

284

Chapter 8

A solution was found through teaching fellowships funded by the newly formed (1948) U.S. Educational Foundation in Greece, commonly known as the Fulbright Foundation in honor of the senator who championed international educational assistance. Anatolia’s first Fulbright teachers arrived in 1949; the following year, six of its seven American teachers held Fulbright grants. During the next twenty-four years, until the program in Greece ceased to include secondary teachers, Anatolia relied largely upon “Fulbrighters” to teach English and related subjects and organize English-language activities. Since, in most instances, such grants were only of one year’s duration, the result was an annual turnover. Even though far fewer subjects were taught in English, the number of American teachers and interns who passed through Anatolia in the 1950s and 1960s was about three times that of its longer-term Greek faculty. Fulbright appointees were normally recent college graduates seeking teaching experience and an opportunity to live overseas. They brought enthusiasm to their task of engaging Anatolia’s students while adapting to the exotic environment of a semirural campus in northern Greece. Most of them went on to professional careers in America. An outstanding example was Warren Benson, who taught music at Anatolia from 1950 to 1952 and organized the school’s first coeducational choir that performed on the Thessaloniki radio station. Benson later became a leading composer and professor of composition at the Eastman School of Music. Fulbright teachers brought more diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds than previous American teachers. The most highly qualified appointee, Osborn Smallwood, who received his Ph.D. from New York University, happened to be Anatolia’s first African American teacher. At the school’s request, his Fulbright grant was renewed for a second year, during which he organized a student debate club. Fulbright grantees provided a solution during those lean years, though an imperfect one given their rapid turnover and frequent lack of experience. Moreover, the school had limited influence in selecting the grantees who were assigned by the Fulbright authorities. Many of those appointed to teach English held degrees in other subjects. Very few American teachers remained long enough to develop a true attachment to the College or to match the standing and influence of its more mature Greek faculty. Aside from Fulbright appointees, other young Americans found their way to Anatolia for short terms. Ivan Holdeman had left his teaching work in Kansas to join a team sent to Greece by the Mennonite Church to assist in the rehabilitation of villages damaged during the civil war. Completing that assignment, he joined Anatolia’s staff in 1953 to teach biology and zoology, married an Anatolia secretary, Anna Theocharidou, and in 1955 they resettled in the United States. Quite different circumstances brought William M. Taylor, graduate of the University of Pennsylvania,



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

285

to Anatolia in 1956. A conscientious objector, Taylor applied through the American Friends Service Committee for a foreign assignment in lieu of military duty. He taught English for two years while his wife, Carrie, served as nurse at the College and part-time teacher. Other young Americans, eager for an overseas experience, agreed to accept teaching assignments in some instances without a full salary.47 Carl Compton and Mary Ingle endeavored to delegate oversight of English instruction and closely linked extracurricular activities to the very few American teachers whose tenure was somewhat longer than that of the Fulbrighters. The College was fortunate in having a series of able, though short-term, English directors. Ralph Kent, an experienced educator, replaced Vasilis Liatsos in 1949 following appointments at Robert College and Athens College, having served as principal at the latter. William Compton, son of Carl and Ruth, joined the English staff in 1951 and two years later became director. Upon his return to the United States, Veo E. Small, a seasoned teacher recently retired in Seattle, replaced him and also served as dean of the Boys School until 1959, thereby relieving President Compton of some administrative duties.48 There were a few significant exceptions to the short-term service described above. Dorothy Almquist began a twelve-year appointment at Anatolia in 1948 that concluded with her serving as director of the Girls School English Department. The reason for her extended stay was her marriage to gymnastics director Vasilis Attaliades, which eventuated in their relocation to the United States. William Sanford also remained a dozen years as biology teacher, organizing a laboratory and greenhouses and also serving as Boys School dean for three years before his departure in 1963. Carrie Lake undertook to establish the home economics facilities in newly constructed White and Riggs Halls while teaching domestic science for six years. Other than these notable exceptions, the American staff experienced such rapid turnover that President Compton characterized the absence of long-term American leadership as the College’s most severe personnel problem and one of “extreme urgency.”49 By contrast with the rapid turnover of American teachers, the postwar decade saw more long-term Greek appointments than probably any comparable period in Anatolia’s history. By 1955 the faculty had reached fiftyfive, of which forty-four were Greek. The influx of new teachers required special efforts by senior educators to help them embrace the distinct ethos that the College had forged over the years. All appointments, whether of Greeks or Americans, were governed by Carl Compton’s outlook on the role of the teacher: “The most important part of education lies not in buildings, or in programs, or even in methods, but in bringing young people into daily contact with teachers whose personal lives will be an inspiring example. We endeavor to have a faculty made up of teachers

286

Chapter 8

who know and love young people, and who are eager to help them and able to help them, in the classroom and out.”50 One leading measure of teaching success was the admission of Anatolia graduates to the University of Thessaloniki. Its rector issued a special letter of congratulation in 1954 when 76 percent of Anatolia applicants passed the entrance exams compared with a general admission rate of 24 percent, and 40 percent scored among the top five applicants for the several university schools, compared to only 8 percent generally.51 SERVING THE COMMUNITY: VILLAGE WELFARE PROJECTS The aftermath of Greece’s civil war paralleled that of the very recent world war in leaving widespread insecurity and impoverishment. Once again the villages of northern Greece suffered disproportionately, having fallen victim to guerrilla attacks and having been cut off from vital supplies. After the lifting of martial law in 1950, their recovery over the following years could only be a slow process, given the country’s gradual return to normalcy.52 The same commitment to render service that had prompted Anatolia to assist the stricken Hortiatis village and its alumni to found a daycare center and nursery school now spurred new endeavors on behalf of war-torn communities more distant from Thessaloniki. The Alumni Association’s attention was drawn to the village of Lefkohori, located in hilly terrain some forty kilometers to the north. Settled by Orthodox Christian refugees from Turkey who replaced its Muslim inhabitants, Lefkohori was evacuated during the civil war. Housed in nearby towns, its residents returned to their abandoned and, in many cases, ruined homes in late 1949. With some assistance from the Greek state, approximately 120 families, many residing in tents, struggled to raise crops on marginally productive farms without equipment, livestock, electricity, or irrigation. In the heavily damaged one-room schoolhouse, a single teacher labored to instruct 150 undernourished children without books or materials. The objective of the “Lefkohori Adoption Committee” was to provide supplies and equipment and also improve health conditions and assist with education. Led by President George Yemenetzis ’32, it provided food, clothing, fuel, equipment, school supplies, knitting yarn, animals, and seeds. With the villagers providing labor, the alumni assisted in repairing and equipping the school, constructing latrines, and improving both the water system and the local road. Dr. Evangellos Tsikoudas ’39 set up a medical station to administer first aid and provide basic medicines and food supplements.



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

287

Given their limited means, the alumni drew assistance from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Congregational Christian Service Committee (CCSC). Their long-term objective became the “educational rehabilitation” of Lefkohori youth. One of the most notable achievements was the founding of an agricultural and technical training school for local teenagers with the support of governmental and private sources.53 It was the Alumni Association’s intention that the Lefkohori project should become a model for similar efforts. Observing its success, UNESCO agreed to extend support to other rural communities of northern Greece, providing sufficient organizational infrastructure was in place. A coordinating committee, Village Educational Rehabilitation in Greece, was set up for this purpose, including in its leadership Carl Compton; Thomas F. Kennedy, an American social worker assigned to Anatolia under a Fulbright grant (1950–1953); and alumnus Manos Iatrides ’46, representing university students. In his report on these operations, Kennedy noted that the Anatolia Alumni Association was unique among American schools in the Near East by virtue of its highly organized programs of learning and service. It was at this time (1953) that the Alumni Association purchased from the College, at a very reasonable price, the former Girls School property in the Allatini district for its activities.54 Anatolia’s students were not slow to follow the lead of the alumni. Despite having fewer means or experience, the class of 1952 resolved to “adopt” a smaller village not far from Lefkohori. The inhabitants of Mavrorachi were refugees from the Pontus region of Turkey who had also been obliged to evacuate their small farms during the civil war, returning in 1950 to resume village life under the severest conditions. After making contact with the village in early 1951, students began providing foodstuffs, clothing, livestock, a weaving loom, yarn, and educational materials. Anatolia helped to bring village leaders into more effective contact with Greek state services. Children were brought to Thessaloniki for tuberculosis X-rays while a Red Cross doctor conducted examinations in the village. Other welfare services, such as the “Queen’s Fund,” founded after the civil war to assist impoverished villages, provided food and were prompted to erect a new school, improve the nearly impassable local road, and build a blacksmith shop that also served for practical instruction. Anatolia students helped to found an agricultural youth club. Material aid came from student donations, income from the school canteen managed by the senior class, and the annual bazaar. They were assisted by John Thomas, CCSC representative sent to work with the Mavrorachi and similar village projects while residing at Anatolia. It was Anatolia’s female students who seized the initiative to advance the Mavrorachi project, organizing a village work camp in the summer

288

Chapter 8

of 1951. Given the aftermath of civil war that still weighed upon much of the countryside, as well as prevailing social mores, their courage in undertaking this project (and that of their parents in allowing it) was remarkable. Each participant was required to apply for police permission to travel to the site. For two weeks they resided in a large army tent on the fringe of the village. Their main activities were to read to and introduce games to the younger children, demonstrate fruit preserving, knitting, and embroidery for the older girls, relay lessons in hygiene and child care from Anatolia’s home economics classes, and organize recreational activities. They repeated the camp the following summer, with male students undertaking it in 1953. Given their ages, limited means, and the difficulties of traveling to Mavrorachi, the material contribution by Anatolia students to the village’s revival should not be overstated. Much of their effort was devoted to alerting Greek public services to the village’s needs. Their greatest achievement probably lay in raising the morale of the village youth. Anatolia’s efforts in Mavrorachi continued throughout the decade of the 1950s. When CCSC phased out its operation in 1957, W. W. Mendenhall, who had succeeded John Thomas as director, became director of Extension Services at Anatolia. He and his wife, Ione, acted as counselors for the full range of College and alumni welfare activities, including village projects, nursery school, children’s library, and downtown evening instruction, until their departure for health reasons in early 1958. Ultimately, Mavrorachi shared the fate of many other marginal villages in northern Greece as most of its residents departed in the 1960s for better prospects in Greek cities or abroad. The Anatolia student teams sought other opportunities, initiating new efforts in the village of Polydendri with a girls work camp in the summer of 1959. Anatolia’s purpose in pursuing these village projects was best expressed by Carl Compton in a letter to one of the agencies providing assistance: “Our main job here at Anatolia College is the training of our students, but we are carrying on rather extensive relief and welfare projects, primarily to help people who have suffered so much, but also to give our students and alumni training in community service activities.”55 The ethic of community service cultivated by Anatolia became manifested in students’ later career choices. Dean Mary Ingle recounted examples, such as Chrysoula Papidou-Electri ’34 who “pioneered” in relief work in Thessaloniki in the 1950s by establishing the first Social First Aid Station under the auspices of the King’s Fund. She was joined by scholarship student Athanasia Valsamaki ’57 following her studies in social work. One of the first female psychiatrists in Thessaloniki at this time was Danae Kokkini-Tsikriki, top Girls School graduate in 1948. Zoi Papadopoulou-Couloumbi ’52, after obtaining her medical degree from



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

289

Pennsylvania Medical College, became a professor of medicine at Georgetown University, but returned to Greece to offer professional service. Inspired by her experience at Mavrorachi, scholarship student Alexandra Kokklitou-Routsoni ’52, after winning a Fulbright grant and completing an advanced degree at Columbia University, helped launch the first child guidance clinic in Thessaloniki. Two of her classmates, also scholarship holders at Anatolia, entered the field of social work. Theodora Petritsi-Georganta, after earning a graduate degree at the University of California, worked with refugees in Greece under United Nations sponsorship. Mary Stephanidou-Kofokotsiou assumed duties as a medical social worker for the city of Thessaloniki. Yet another classmate, Tanoula Nasla-Hadjiparaskeva, after studies in the United States, assumed management of the CCSC project and established a settlement house in one of Thessaloniki’s refugee neighborhoods.56 The village projects were only one illustration of school spirit. A wide range of extracurricular activities flourished during these years. The crowning experience for every class was its senior trip, usually to some part of Greece where few students had visited. The class of 1952 was the first to venture abroad, taking advantage of the rare lull in HellenicTurkish relations to choose Constantinople (Istanbul) as its destination. The classes of 1953 and 1954 followed their example. Those unforgettable journeys, with boys and girls touring separately, included audiences with Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras, formerly an Anatolia trustee, and visits to Robert College, which overlooked the Bosphorus. But it was the class of 1955 that set a new precedent by traveling westward to Vienna for its senior trip, the cost partly covered by proceeds from the school canteen.57 LEGAL CONCERNS: APPOINTMENT OF AN ADVISORY COMMITTEE Since its reestablishment in Thessaloniki three decades earlier, Anatolia had sought to deliver education of the highest quality while also meeting legal requirements for the operation of foreign schools. It was to be expected that Greece’s educational authorities would seek to infuse the country’s rich Hellenic heritage, together with patriotic doctrines, into the standard curriculum that all schools were obliged to teach. However, a lively debate raged for many years among Greek educators, some of whom faulted such practices as the memorization of antiquated texts as obstacles to students’ grasping the essence of Greece’s classical heritage. Anatolia was challenged to fit into its schedule some thirty-eight classes weekly, including both the state-mandated program and its own priorities of English language, natural sciences, and Anglo-American culture,

290

Chapter 8

while also finding time for the always-important extracurricular activities. Resisting the erosion of their top educational priorities was one of the major challenges preoccupying Anatolia’s leaders throughout its years in Greece.58 The Ministry of Education had been more lenient during the first postwar years. But the issue of Anatolia’s curriculum arose again in the mid1950s with proposed legislation to restrict further the freedom of foreign schools to teach subjects beyond those prescribed by the state. Compton, in cooperation with Pierce College in Athens, an American school founded in Turkey that had also relocated to Greece, made overtures to the Ministry while also seeking assistance from the U.S. Embassy. The two schools objected on the grounds that the envisioned rules allowed no distinction between nonprofit institutions such as Anatolia and Pierce, which had invested heavily for the sole purpose of serving the country’s youth, and commercial enterprises, which the state might reasonably want to regulate in order to protect students from exploitation. They requested a separate legal status enabling them to continue their efforts unhindered and even submitted to the Ministry a suggested draft of an alternative law for that purpose. The Ministry replied that a major obstacle to granting the schools’ petition was their having governing bodies based in the United States rather than in Greece. It was suggested that if they could form oversight committees locally with a majority of Greek members, they might become eligible for a more favorable legal status. Compton and President Helen Nichol at Pierce College, relying on assurances that such a committee need exercise only advisory responsibilities without detracting from the authority of their Boards of Trustees, proceeded to establish the same, following approval by their Boards. Compton expressed doubts about the usefulness of such a committee, characterizing it as a “fifth wheel.” He informed the Embassy that, although he regretted such a requirement, Anatolia had indeed complied, and requested the Embassy’s assistance to secure a special status for the two schools.59 Anatolia’s new Advisory Committee, composed primarily of leading figures in Thessaloniki who were willing to give their time and counsel, held its first meeting in March 1955. Charalambos Frangistas, professor of law and rector of the University of Thessaloniki as well as a former minister of education, was elected president. Dimitris Zannas ’38, a rising lawyer, became its secretary. At this first meeting, President Compton recounted the major problems facing the school. These included not only the threatened legal restrictions but, no less troublesome, recent action by the authorities revoking earlier permission for most of the so-called deviations from the standard program that allowed Anatolia to provide its own special features. The



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

291

most important “deviations” included permission to teach certain subjects in English; to require English-language entrance exams in addition to the state-mandated exams in Greek; to require a preparatory year for beginning students with weak English skills; to teach fewer than the standard hours of ancient Greek, Latin, and French, providing the required material for those subjects was adequately covered; to dismiss students who in the faculty’s judgment showed inadequate academic performance or conduct; and to begin and end the school year on different dates than the state schools. Although some of the “deviations” had been restored following an appeal, there was no assurance they would be permitted in the future.60 Another important issue pertained to the College’s administration. Greek law required all state-recognized gymnasia (high schools) to be directed by a qualified Greek educator. Anatolia’s practice had been to conform to that requirement technically by appointing a Greek gymnasiarchis (high school director) to each of its two schools but assigned most actual authority to non-Greek deans. For many years this responsibility had been exercised by Compton in the Boys School and Ingle in the Girls School. The president justified this practice as the only way to retain essential elements of the College’s American character, considering that its curriculum had been brought into close conformity with that of Greek schools. These and other issues arose repeatedly, particularly given the often strained relationship with the long-serving inspector of secondary education, Athanasios Papaevgeniou, who was reluctant to allow even minor departures from the literal provisions of the educational law.61 The hoped-for law conferring special legal status to Anatolia and Pierce College failed to materialize, possibly because of their unwillingness to transfer greater authority from their American boards to the local committees, including property ownership. On the other hand, the feared legislation imposing further restrictions was also not forthcoming. Anatolia’s ability to offer an educational program that supplemented and aspired to improve upon that of the state, primarily through the “deviations,” remained a perennial concern. The Ministry of Education increasingly imposed uniformity upon all schools, inhibiting variety, experimentation, and creativity. Anatolia continued to make every effort to sustain some margin of independence in its academic offerings but over time was compelled to conform ever more to state-mandated practices.62 A very few private secondary institutions, including Athens College and later (1963) Pierce College, succeeded in becoming designated as “equivalent to the public schools.” Through this exceptional status, they gained exemption from final examinations being conducted by committees including public school teachers, as required of most private schools. In addition, their teachers were accorded a more advantageous status,

292

Chapter 8

including state retirement benefits. Anatolia long endeavored to gain that same designation, but without success, perhaps because it lacked the influence enjoyed by institutions situated closer to the political center in Athens. In later years, however, “equivalency” became arguably more a liability than an asset; the few private schools that had acquired it became increasingly subject to state intervention and control.63 The Advisory Committee continued for almost two decades to hold periodic meetings with the president and senior staff, to assist Anatolia in its relations with the government, and to represent it to the local community. THE END OF AN ERA: THE COMPTONS DEPART Carl Compton’s retirement arrived forty-five years after his service with Anatolia had begun in Merzifon in 1913. Three times that service had been interrupted, but each time he returned to his school, with his lifelong companion, Ruth. The last of those four stints, from 1946 to 1958, saw Greece advance from war and civil strife to an enduring peace and the beginning of an era of prosperity, probably the most satisfying period for the Comptons. They departed with the unqualified affection and admiration of students and personnel, shared fully by the Thessaloniki community. This was emphatically demonstrated by the many accolades from the city’s leaders as well as conferral upon Carl of the Gold Cross of King George by the Greek state, the highest public award for any foreigner.64 Carl and Ruth Compton left Anatolia during what many graduates of those years consider to have been its finest era. Its two separate divisions, the Boys and the Girls Schools, had remained small and intimate, enrolling two hundred fifty to three hundred students each. They were housed on the finest campus in northern Greece and led by experienced and devoted mentors. Throughout Anatolia’s long history, no one better expressed and embodied its ideals and aspirations than Carl and Ruth Compton. It is noteworthy, however, that President Compton during his last years voiced concern that Anatolia might be at risk from new influences in Greek society. He lamented the increase in disciplinary problems among students and observed that the “former authority of both school and home is breaking down.” These were undoubtedly issues that his successors would have to face.65 In his final report to the trustees, Compton reflected on the many adventures Anatolia had experienced and the changes it had undergone during its several decades of service. “Hundreds of teachers and thousands of students have come and gone. But through all the changes there has been a unifying thread of ideals and purposes which has given strength and



Anatolia Renewed (1945–1958)

293

direction to programs and methods, no matter how much these have been adjusted to meet changing times and changing conditions.”66 The Comptons continued to serve Anatolia. Their home in Northfield, Massachusetts, was long a magnet for graduates and friends of the College. They traveled widely to speak about the school and win supporters, while Carl contributed his wisdom and experience as a trustee.

9

} Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

G

THE UNITED STATES ENGAGES GREECE

reece’s relationship with the United States changed profoundly beginning in the late 1940s. Traditionally, America had been viewed largely as a benevolent, though distant, “uncle.” A strong sympathizer with the Hellenic cause during the war of liberation from Ottoman rule, since the late nineteenth century it had provided a haven for generations of Greek emigrants seeking opportunities abroad. During both world wars the two countries were allies. After World War I, American assistance through agencies such as Near East Relief, the Refugee Settlement Commission, and the Red Cross had helped resolve Greece’s immense task of settling well over a million refugees. However, its geographical remoteness and reluctance to become entangled in European affairs kept the United States beyond the fray of Greek politics, most notably by contrast with Great Britain, long the predominant foreign power in the region. The onset of the Cold War and American perception of a determined campaign by the Soviet Union to impose political control and an alien ideology upon countries in the eastern Mediterranean propelled Greece to the first rank of U.S. strategic concerns. Under the aegis of the Truman Doctrine and the European Recovery Program (better known as the Marshall Plan), the United States concluded agreements with the Greek government in 1947 to assume extensive responsibilities for defense and economic restoration that the British were no longer able to shoulder. 295

296

Chapter 9

Over the next decade and a half, the United States undertook expenditures for military and economic enhancement in Greece totaling over $3 billion, a vast sum at the time. The results exceeded all expectations. Following the dreadful civil war (1946–1949) in which government forces with American assistance overcame leftist rebels, Greece gradually entered a new era of security and prosperity. In 1952 Greece became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which accorded the country an unprecedented era of peace following a half century of wars, almost one per decade. Massive capital investment and infrastructure works transformed the hitherto stagnant economy from reliance mainly upon backward agricultural practices to expansion through new urban-based industry, commerce, shipping, and services. Currency stabilization measures ended years of uncontrolled inflation and a crippled drachma. Widespread disease, most notably malaria and tuberculosis, was eradicated or greatly reduced, and life expectancy rose sharply. Whereas by most measures of economic and social well-being Greece had been roughly on a par with her Balkan neighbors, from the 1950s she began a rapid trajectory that left them well behind, culminating in Associate Membership in the European Economic Community (Common Market) in 1961. For more than two decades, Greece enjoyed one of the highest economic growth rates of any European country.1 Other consequences of the country’s rapid economic growth included mounting economic disparity between urban and rural areas, despite improvements in agriculture and transportation. The ongoing migration from the country’s villages to its growing towns gained new momentum. Thessaloniki’s population soared as apartment buildings proliferated. The postwar generation was transforming the city’s earlier image of an Asia Minor refugee community. The last cinema showing Turkishlanguage films, the Alkazar, closed its doors; Hollywood movies now drew the largest crowds. Over the following years, the relationship between Greece and its American ally passed through many phases. Given the unequal status in power and wealth between the two countries, the consequences of shifts or strains were felt disproportionately by the Greek side. During the first two decades, through the mid-1960s, there was widespread appreciation for American assistance. At the same time, some resentment arose toward the “proconsul” role U.S. officials were seen to play and later because of the perceived U.S. position on the controversial issue of independence for Cyprus.2 One consequence of the new relationship was the proliferation of U.S. organizations, both governmental and private, in a country where Americans had hitherto been relatively few. Though the greatest concentration was in the capital, their presence became strongly evident in Thessaloniki



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

297

as well, where the U.S. Consulate General, Anatolia College, the American Farm School, and the YMCA had been virtually the only operations with even small numbers of Americans on their staffs. By contrast, following the U.S. commitment to provide security and assistance, an influx of agencies arrived to fulfill that obligation. They included the U.S. Military Mission, the American Mission for Aid to Greece (AMAG), the U.S. Information Service (USIS), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), CARE, and the Voice of America with its radio relay operation near Thessaloniki. A U.S. Air Force transmission station towered above Hortiatis village only a few miles from Anatolia. A ring of U.S. military bases just north of Thessaloniki confronted the southern border of the Iron Curtain just a short distance away. U.S fleet visits brought thousands of American sailors to the city; Anatolia hosted basketball and soccer matches between their crews and College teams. With the achievement of a high degree of security for her northern frontiers from the 1950s, American business firms found opportunities to contribute to and share in Greece’s rising prosperity. Among the first in Thessaloniki were Socony Vacuum Oil Corporation (later Mobil Oil) and Texaco. Leading American tobacco firms sent buyers to oversee the export of northern Greece’s highly favored oriental leaf. The greatest breakthrough in American investment was engineered by Greek American entrepreneur Thomas A. Pappas, who collaborated with ESSO Corporation in the 1960s to establish an industrial complex in Thessaloniki based upon an oil refinery, petrochemical units, and a steel mill. This major undertaking paved the way for other U.S. manufacturers, such as Ethyl and Goodyear, to open production units. In the financial services sector, American Express opened a banking branch, followed by the First National City Bank and Bank of America.3 The influx of U.S. government agencies and private firms brought new opportunities for management careers. Essential qualifications included fluency in English, a skill in low supply in northern Greece where French and German had been the predominant foreign languages. Anatolia graduates enjoyed a marked advantage when competing for such appointments. It was not uncommon for companies to approach Anatolia for skilled or trainable personnel before announcing such openings publicly, as did the Chrysler Corporation when establishing in the early 1960s a short-lived automotive plant in Thessaloniki with a former Anatolia student as sales and personnel manager. The increasing demand for English instruction gave rise to new language schools. One of the most successful was founded in 1952 by alumna Anastasia Yerakopoulou-Vafopoulou ’34 on the city’s central avenue. The years following the Comptons’ departure also saw impressive new public projects in Thessaloniki, mostly begun under the conservative

298

Chapter 9

government of Constantine Karamanlis (1955–1963), who was rare among political leaders in hailing from northern Greece. These included a magnificent waterfront promenade, an enlarged university, and the impressive Theater of Northern Greece. The area’s infrastructure expanded with the extension of Thessaloniki’s harbor and the establishment of an industrial zone on the city’s western fringe. Improved highways shortening travel time from Athens, the Balkans, and western Europe, a new railway station, and better hotels enhanced Thessaloniki’s attraction as a tourist destination. The old tramlines were uprooted in favor of bus and taxi service. The city’s airport began to accommodate international flights and the annual Thessaloniki International Fair drew many foreign exhibitors.4 Hence, it was to a burgeoning city with many new opportunities and challenges that Anatolia’s sixth president arrived in 1958. HOWARD JOHNSTON’S PRESIDENCY 1958–1964 There was no candidate from Anatolia’s staff to replace the retiring President Compton. For the first time, the trustees conducted a search beyond missionary circles and considered several prospects before selecting Howard W. Johnston. His background in many ways seemed to correspond both to Anatolia’s traditions and to the new era through which Greece and the College were passing. The son of a Presbyterian minister from Iowa, he attended Coe College in that state. Five years of military duty, including fierce combat in the Pacific theater, enabled him to comprehend the wartime ordeals of his Greek hosts. He was the first Anatolia president to hold a Ph.D. degree, from Columbia University in political science. His professional experience was mostly with the U.S. government, including a three-year assignment in Germany, where he assisted in the establishment of the Free University of Berlin. His wife, Jeanne Sheetz Johnston, also from Iowa, a trained librarian and musician, was to fully share in his responsibilities at Anatolia.5 The new president began his tenure with certain distinct advantages. First, as noted above, Greece was entering an era of prosperity with new investment, expanded employment, and rising standards of living. Although this trend was still in its early stages, more families were able to afford tuition charges at a private school. A second advantage was the reorganization of Anatolia’s Board of Trustees following the appointment of John F. Chapman as chairman in 1958. For many years, the trustees had played a largely passive role in advancing the school’s material fortunes. To be sure, they had discharged the responsibilities of institutional governance conscientiously but were slow to take initiatives, rarely visited the school, and left the responsibil-



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

299

ity for finding resources largely to the president based in Greece. The previous chair, Rev. Russell Stafford, held the post for twenty-seven years, while employed much of that time as president of the Hartford Seminary Foundation. John Chapman brought new energy and purpose to the duties of chairman. His attachment to Anatolia had firm roots in his experience there as a tutor in 1926–1927 following graduation from Grinnell College. He later became a faculty member of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business and executive editor of the Harvard Business Review. Chapman well understood the need for a stronger funding base in the United States, but it would require time and the active participation of committed trustees to develop greater sources of support. He appointed new trustee committees with specific responsibilities and sought Board members with backgrounds in management and finance. Among his first appointees were David B. Ingram and Thomas Johnson, who served on the Finance Committee under treasurer Harold Belcher (after 1964, Carl Thiessen).6 President Johnston’s third distinct advantage was the unprecedented availability of U.S. government funding beginning shortly before his arrival. Initially it came as “counterpart funds,” (i.e., drachma accounts held by the U.S. government). Once that source was exhausted, the newly established (1961) Agency for International Development (USAID) began accepting applications from select American schools in Greece for dollar funding under Public Law 480; other funds became available under the Mutual Security Act. It was the first in the series of such grants that enabled the College to complete the Olympus Hall dormitory without having to further invade its limited endowment. These new resources opened the way especially for building projects, though in the early years they financed other needs as well, including salaries, scholarships, and equipment. During the postwar decade and a half, when Anatolia had struggled to accommodate its Girls School, very limited means could be spared for improving the original campus that not only served the Boys School but also provided shared facilities such as the library and auditorium. Expanded enrollment and an invigorated science program created new needs for classrooms, dormitories, and laboratories. A solution was now found through a U.S. government grant of $175,000 to build and equip a new academic building, for which 1902 alumnus Lucas Kyrides also made a significant contribution. Constructed as an annex to Macedonia Hall, while matching it in dimensions, the four-story structure provided six physics, chemistry, and biology labs, eight classrooms, a library, a teachers’ meeting room, offices, a print shop, and an auditorium seating over 350. The expanded science facilities designed principally by Professor Karademos enabled female students to now have full access to science

300

Chapter 9

instruction. The dedication ceremony for the Lucas P. Kyrides Science Building in the fall of 1961 brought the Greek royal family, headed by King Paul and Queen Frederica, and a throng of visitors to admire especially the well-equipped laboratories and open-shelf library, both virtually unique among schools in Greece.7 In the spring of that same year, Anatolia celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary with a full week of activities attended by hundreds of visitors. From the United States came President Emeritus Carl and Mrs. Ruth Compton, internationally famed heart specialist and Anatolia trustee Dr. Paul Dudley White, Mrs. Alice Riggs, and other former teachers and alumni. They heard Anatolia’s student chorale perform in the city’s Royal Theater under the direction of music teacher Anastasios Pappas. The Greek minister of education delivered the commencement address. Nicholas Hourmouziades, teacher of Greek and theater director, presented student performances of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One of the lead actors happened to be Vasilis Tsivilikas, who went on to a stellar career on the Greek popular stage. The College took advantage of the occasion to dedicate a new youth center in the outlying village of Polydendri, built largely through student donations.8 Although Howard Johnston’s tenure thus had a promising beginning, he also inherited an intractable property issue. A wedge of land impeded the development of the Girls School campus, despite repeated efforts over the years to acquire the three-acre piece with its small house. With each successive attempt, the owner had demanded a higher sum than the trustees were willing to pay. Perceiving the soaring property values in the Panorama area, Johnston stoutly insisted upon an expenditure of $27,000 to acquire the “Yerousis” property, several times the price that Ernest Riggs and the trustees had rejected twelve years earlier and well above the amount ($16,000) the Board had refused to pay less than two years before. To demonstrate his conviction, Johnston pledged a personal contribution toward the cost, as did Dean Mary Ingle, who shared his certainty. The purchase was finally financed through the sale of a somewhat larger but less advantageously located Anatolia property known as the “triangle.” When finding buyers, preference was given to employees and friends of the school in order to ensure a congenial neighborhood. One section was purchased by the Norwegian Committee on Refugees for a retirement community for displaced Armenians, which became known as the “Nansen Home” in honor of the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Fridtjof Nansen. The new acquisition, together with that of a small plot of land adjoining the Olympus Hall dormitory initially used for tennis courts, brought the campus to approximately forty-five acres (eighteen hectares). Im-



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

301

portantly, it also provided a suitable new entrance to the Girls School. The College took advantage of this opportunity to relocate and improve the Boys School entrance directly opposite. The inscription on the stone plaque adorning the new gatehouse read: ANATOLIA COLLEGE FOUNDED 1886 IN MERZIFON ASIA MINOR. REESTABLISHED 1924 IN THESSALONIKI AT THE INVITATION OF THE GREEK PEOPLE. DEDICATED TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING.9

The costly purchase just described demonstrated how Thessaloniki’s expansion was inflating land values on the city’s outskirts. The continuing transition of the area between Pylea and Panorama from rural to suburban was further evidenced by the increasing traffic on the road that connected those two villages and separated Anatolia’s boys and girls campuses. The brightly colored donkey carts that once had delivered food and firewood to the city became rare, though occasionally the splintered remains of one that had retreated too slowly from a truck’s path could be spotted in the roadside ditch. This new reality posed a growing hazard for pedestrian passage between Anatolia’s two campuses, especially for girls crossing the road to reach the library, laboratories, auditorium, and other shared facilities on the boys side. Following an accident involving a girl student who, fortunately, suffered only minor injuries, a solution to this mounting danger could be delayed no longer. When overtures to public authorities to provide a safe crossing produced no results, the College undertook construction of a pedestrian underpass between the two campuses. The “tunnel” proved to be a fitting solution that remains so to this day. Given the reality of a campus divided into two separate zones by an increasingly busy traffic artery, the underpass enabled the College to escape any serious hindrance to its operation from that source.10 The next major addition to the physical plant provided campus housing for staff and visitors while also enhancing the boys residence facilities. The new building was situated in accordance with the original plan from the 1920s projecting a traditional college quadrangle for the north campus. Its main section of three stories, with apartments for the dormitory director, resident faculty, and guests, was linked to Alumni Hall by a two-story annex that encompassed a dormitory for twenty-four boys, a second dining room, a recreation area, and a laundry. Its architect was Constantine Katsanos, who had designed Kyrides Hall. Completed in 1964, the cost was met mostly by U.S. government grants that at this time also financed extensive renovations of Alumni, Minnesota, and Macedonia Halls. The new building was named Ladas Hall to honor Pericles Ladas, father of trustee Stephen Ladas in New York, who also contributed to the project.

302

Chapter 9

With its completion, Anatolia now had a combined boarding capacity of 170 in both schools as well as accommodations for supervisory staff.11 It should be noted that none of the postwar construction, substantial though it was, could match the campus’s original stone edifices (Macedonia, Minnesota, Alumni, Morley, Westervelt, and White House). Higher building costs and the school’s limited means put further stone construction out of reach. On the other hand, the newer structures of brick and plaster (Riggs, Olympus, Kyrides, Ladas, and White Hall) drew upon more recent techniques, especially for internal design and efficiency. An outstanding feature of the campus was its several athletic fields and courts that enhanced its appearance while illustrating the importance the College attached to competitive sports. Another was the extensive groves of pine and cypress trees planted over the years by students and staff. In recent years, American government financing had underwritten significant improvements. Howard Johnston handled the complex grant applications and developed positive relations with U.S. officials in Athens and Washington. As a measure of his determination to improve conditions for living and learning at Anatolia, the president even slept and took meals for a few days in the boys dormitory to gain a better understanding of its needs. Another initiative was designed to foster cordial relations with the nearby community of Pylea, which lacked adequate sports facilities. Anatolia allowed the village’s athletic council to share playing fields on the College’s northern fringe, only occasionally used by Anatolia students, and arranged for the joint construction of a modest building for a field house and dressing room. Johnston, however, expressed his chief interest to be not in land and buildings, “but in the moral, intellectual and spiritual sides of our work.” He wrote to John Chapman of “pioneering” and seeking to “modernize” the College. In one of his first reports to the trustees, the new president asserted: “A widespread feeling among the Greeks is that the American influence at Anatolia which has waned in recent years should be strengthened if the College is to be a truly bi-national school as they seem to want it to be.” One early effort in that direction was to bring an experienced American educator to chair the English department and also act as dean of the Boys School. Dr. Eugene Bahn was a senior English professor at Wayne State University whom Johnston had met while Bahn was teaching at a university in Germany. Disappointingly, he remained only one year, to be replaced in 1961 by Dr. John Folsom, another highly qualified academic from Boston University. This new chairman’s major undertaking was to establish a language laboratory with a gift from the Arthur Ashley Williams Foundation. The Williams laboratory, the first of its kind in Greece, drew upon the latest methods for introducing English to beginning and



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

303

intermediate learners, featuring tape recorders and listening booths. Hundreds of taped programs enabled students at different levels to reinforce their classroom work through drills and conversation practice. Folsom also merged the English departments of the Girls and Boys Schools. Though appointed for three years, he departed after only two, in order to, like Bahn, resume his career in American academia. Clearly it was no easy task to find well-qualified Americans willing to devote a large part of their careers to a school in faraway Greece. President Johnston, like Compton before him, viewed the need for continuity among wellqualified American personnel as one of the College’s major challenges. In one instance, he made an appointment he later had reason to regret (as recounted later in this chapter): biology teacher William Sanford became dean of the Boys School in 1961 and was entrusted with the authority of acting president during Johnston’s absences in the United States.12 It was Anatolia’s mature and seasoned Greek faculty who exercised the greatest influence over the student body, rather than the few short-term and mostly inexperienced Americans. Not only did they have a longer presence at the school, but they also taught the subjects on which students preparing for Greek university admission, the great majority, would be tested. An outstanding example was Nikolas Papahadzis, devoted teacher and scholar of Greek language and history, who for twenty-six years shepherded Anatolia’s boys not only in the classroom but also as dormitory counselor. Long after his retirement (1972), graduates recounted his effective teaching style as well as the excursions he led to local archeological sites. The English version of one of his scholarly works, Monuments of Thessaloniki, was produced by the College’s print shop. In seeking to elevate the College, Mrs. Jeanne Johnston undertook to modernize the library in its new and more spacious quarters in Kyrides Hall. Besides expanding its holdings to over thirteen thousand volumes and increasing magazine subscriptions, she formed a faculty committee and set goals for upgrading its content and organization. Anatolia’s open-shelf library with holdings ranging beyond the prescribed secondary school curriculum, and which allowed students to borrow books, was unique in northern Greece at this time. Graduates recall how it kindled their intellectual appetites. The Library Club led by Stratos Paraskevaides familiarized students with the Dewey Decimal classification and prepared them for part-time campus employment. One such opportunity was the small campus bookstore where English-language works could be purchased. Another innovation was the Office of Public Affairs and Alumni Relations headed initially by a young graduate, Evangelos Kofos ’52, later to become a foreign affairs authority with the rank of ambassador. Its initiatives included boosting alumni relations and producing publications: a

304

Chapter 9

modern-style school catalogue, The Anatolia Newsletter, and The Anatolia Alumnus. The Alumni Association completed construction of its new clubhouse and recreation center on the Allatini property purchased from the College. Its major challenge now became to sustain its endeavors and hold the loyalty of graduates during the newly prosperous 1960s when its earlier humanitarian services addressing postwar suffering gradually waned.13 An initiative designed to bring to Anatolia talented youth from outlying parts of Greece was regional scholarships. Competitive examinations held in provincial centers drew able young minds and broadened the College’s geographical range. By underwriting the cost of boarding scholarships, sponsors not only assisted the school to enhance and diversify its student body but also aided it financially, given the several unfilled dormitory vacancies. The 1960 regional examinations drew nearly 140 applicants for six scholarships; in later years those numbers would mount. Faculty teams conducting examinations traveled at times over nearly impassable roads to meet candidates and their families in remote villages.14 With a view to drawing the College closer to Western educational prototypes, Johnston enlisted international groups in joint projects with Anatolia students. In the summer of 1959, the College hosted a conference of the World Council of Churches that drew church leaders from several continents. The following summer, two hundred delegates of the World Student Christian Federation arrived from seventy countries. The “Christian Friendship Caravan” brought young Americans for three successive summers to join Anatolia students in campus work projects. In 1962 the Intergovernmental Committee for European Emigration brought sixtyfive village girls for summer instruction, and the European branches of the YMCA convened on campus.15 The desire to distance campus life from the severe postwar years was expressed even in student dress. In place of their earlier austere uniforms, Anatolia’s girls were now asked to wear gray skirts with a variety of colorful options for sweaters. The main reason for even a liberal dress code was to prevent variations in the financial status of students’ families from being reflected in their campus appearance. Male students remained free to dress as they pleased, within general standards of respectability. Athletics continued to play a central role in campus life. Intramural matches among class sections went on steadily while teams prepared for the main competitive events. These included an annual Thessaloniki tournament organized by the Ministry of Education as well as informal matches with city schools, both public and private. Major occasions saw the exchanges of team visits with cooperating schools beyond Thessaloniki, including Robert College in Istanbul when international politics permitted, but more regularly with a select few academies in Athens.



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

305

Pierce College was the choice rival for Anatolia’s girls and Athens College for the boys. Basketball, volleyball, soccer, and track and field were the main activities. The quality of Anatolia’s athletic offerings by contemporary standards was reflected in the exceptional performance of the Alumni Association’s men’s basketball team. Competing in the top professional category, for several years it ranked among the country’s finest teams and in the early 1960s was a contender for the national championship. Such successes could only reinforce the spirit of competition on the Anatolia campus.16 Campus sports were regulated through an athletic association that assigned responsibility to elected student leaders. Its constitution emphasized standards of sportsmanship. Only those with passing grades and good conduct records were allowed to participate in tournaments. Major events concluding the athletic calendar every year were the May Day celebration for the Girls School, organized by head gymnast Marika Kontozoglou, and Field Day for boys, perpetuating a school tradition from Merzifon. A very different type of concern came to preoccupy many students at Anatolia and other schools at this time. In the early 1960s, intense competition among Greece’s political parties rose to engulf a broader social spectrum than before, including university and even some high school students. Although politics did not normally intrude upon student life at Anatolia, an exception occurred in December of 1962. Anatolia’s older boys left classes to join, for a single day, a widespread strike led by university students demanding educational reforms. The incident passed quickly, but was a harbinger of more active political involvement by students in the near future. It was only a few months later that the killing in Thessaloniki of a popular leftist politician, Gregory Lambrakis, heightened political tensions throughout the country. The incident subsequently drew worldwide attention through the acclaimed literary and cinema work, Z, authored by Anatolia alumnus, Vasilis Vasilikos ’52.17 Howard Johnston’s ambitions for Anatolia went well beyond the initiatives recounted above. His Ten Year Development Plan submitted to the trustees in 1960 and revised subsequently proposed such innovations as an Orthodox Church to be erected on the girls campus; a girls combined auditorium, classroom, and fine arts building; new girls and boys athletic gymnasiums; a sports field house; the Practical Chemistry Institute; and a strengthened endowment. His plan, with a projected cost of $1 million, also envisioned an expanded faculty with improved remuneration. It was Johnston’s hope as well to end reliance upon Fulbright teachers, despite their affordability, because of their brief and uncertain assignments. Moreover, during the “restless 60s” a couple of young Fulbrighters had proven to be less than cooperative. Still other projects given serious

306

Chapter 9

consideration were a two-year extension program of commercial studies for high school graduates to prepare for business careers and a postsecondary secretarial school. For his many proposals to uplift and expand the College, Johnston received enthusiastic expressions of support from the trustees, always providing that the means could be found to make them a reality.18 Most of the ambitious goals of the president’s ten-year plan remained unfulfilled, for reasons that will be related. One notable exception, however, was the introduction of secretarial studies. Although employment opportunities with Greek and foreign firms surged during these years of economic expansion, there was little training available locally in Englishlanguage office skills. In 1961, Jo Alice Callison joined the faculty and began offering typing as an elective subject for regular students, both girls and boys. Assisted by a USAID grant, the Anatolia Secretarial School commenced operation under Callison’s direction in 1964. Housed in the Kyrides Science Building, its one-year training of high school graduates in modern office practices, with emphasis upon English-language proficiency, led to employment for scores of young women, including many Anatolia alumnae.19 An important expression of support for Johnston’s initiatives resulted from the visit to Anatolia by a recently appointed trustee who was an accomplished international educator. Dr. Floyd Black had served as president of both Robert College in Istanbul and the American College of Sofia in Bulgaria, two prestigious regional institutions with historic links to Anatolia. Assigned by Chairman Chapman to head Anatolia’s new trustee committee for planning and development, Black’s enthusiastic report to the trustees commended Johnston’s efforts. Moreover, the Sofia school’s New York–based Board over which Black presided, following the refusal by Bulgaria’s postwar Communist rulers to allow its reopening, began to make annual distributions from its endowment. Anatolia, seen as the most closely related of the American schools in the region, for many years received substantial annual stipends. Dr. Black concluded his report to the trustees with a comment, both insightful and predictive, about Anatolia’s presidency: “The president of such a College abroad has a lonely occupation. He has few associates on his own level of responsibility. While he has plenty of advisers, he must often act alone. Many look to him for guidance and comfort quite outside the usual range of his administrative duties. In his small community he is prophet, judge and king.”20 Dr. Black also called the trustees’ attention to the immediate and continuing need for increases in income for the school. Indeed, Anatolia’s finances had posed a challenge to every president. While approximately three-quarters of operating revenues came from tuition, the remainder had to be found mostly in the United States, in addition to funds for phys-



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

307

ical improvements. The amount of scholarship assistance that could be made available, always a high priority, also depended upon the school’s success in finding donations. The president, therefore, became responsible both for the leadership of the school in Greece and for fundraising in the United States, including all the required traveling, speaking, and cultivation of supporters. One response to this challenge was for the president to spend a good portion of the year in the United States, leaving the administration in the hands of a trusted deputy. This was the preferred strategy of George White and Ernest Riggs, who could rely on Dean Compton to run the school during their absence. By contrast, while Compton was president, he was also Boys School dean and therefore most reluctant to be absent from campus duties. His solution, more feasible perhaps during those lean years in Greece, was rigorous economy, setting a personal example in minimizing expenditures. He also generated some income, both in Greece and the United States, by virtue of his long service to Anatolia, wide contacts, and extensive correspondence, aided always by Mary Ingle. Howard Johnston arrived with none of those advantages. He came as a stranger to Anatolia with no background in Greece, contacts in missionary circles, nor experience in secondary education or fundraising. Moreover, he had no seasoned dean in the Boys School to help him become oriented to the unfamiliar campus environment or to manage the school when he was absent for fundraising. As both Johnston and Chairman Chapman understood, Greece was passing through a new era of rising expectations and also rising costs. The College needed new and improved facilities and academic programs and its staff better remuneration, all worthy but costly goals. By the 1960s, Anatolia’s fundraising in the United States had reached a low point. The NECA solution had proved unsatisfactory for generating income. That organization’s main purpose was now mostly to provide its member institutions, reduced to only six, with administrative and personnel services for which they were charged. Despite the disadvantages of maintaining its administrative office at NECA headquarters in New York, whereas Boston was its legal home and trustees’ base, Anatolia remained a member of NECA.21 John Chapman, while bringing new energy and determination to the responsibilities of the chair, would need time to mount the organization required for success in the competitive arena of institutional fundraising. He initially assigned newly appointed trustee Everett Stephens, prewar Anatolia teacher and now administrator at the Babson Institute of Business Administration near Boston, to coordinate stateside promotion. After one year, Stephens relinquished that responsibility, citing the

308

Chapter 9

many obstacles to a successful funding campaign, though he continued to provide active assistance. Financial contributions from trustees remained disappointingly low. President Johnston became so preoccupied with managing the College that he made only a single trip to the United States, in 1960, to solicit support. Consideration was given to employing a professional fundraiser, but the chances of that succeeding were seen to be slim in view of past experience. Girls School dean Mary Ingle again assisted by traveling to nineteen cities in the United States and engaging donors with her customary zeal. Treasurer Harold Belcher, nevertheless, was compelled to inform his fellow Board members: “This is a critical time in the life of the College. The institution and its plant has had a remarkable development under the leadership of President Johnston but unless we can develop a much greater base of support the College will not be able to carry on.”22 Another factor hampered Johnston’s efforts to harness the necessary financial resources to achieve his objectives. Carl Compton had relied heavily upon Prodromos Ebeoglou to oversee business operations in Thessaloniki, allowing him ample latitude to make decisions, not only in financial matters, but across a broad range of administrative issues. He believed he could count upon his business manager’s demonstrated efficiency and personal loyalty. While largely fulfilling Compton’s expectations, Ebeoglou came to exercise authority in ways that offended many colleagues, who brought their grievances to Howard Johnston during his first months in office. The new president was persuaded to relieve Ebeoglou of his duties, arranging for his early retirement. Whatever the merits of that decision, there was no suitable replacement at hand, especially following the death shortly thereafter of senior administrator George Georgiades. As the College’s financial deficit grew, Johnston was reluctant to incur the salary of a new manager. His loyal wife, Jeanne, assisted him in that department, and a young accountant with banking experience, George Karalias, was appointed comptroller in 1962. But the school remained essentially without practiced financial leadership, a serious liability, as Floyd Black noted in the report on his visit.23 Despite unprecedented funding from the U.S. government for its physical plant as well as for salaries and scholarships ($227,000 in 1963) and an increased enrollment reaching 710 that same fall, the College’s deficit grew steadily. It was spurred by inflation-driven rises in staff compensation, maintenance, and improvements for the expanded campus, administrative expenses, and arrears in tuition payments. The 1963 budget projected a deficit of $88,000 for the following year. Though there was reluctance to raise tuition and fees, given that Anatolia already charged more than any other school in northern Greece, there seemed to be no alternative. Meanwhile, it proved necessary to borrow from local banks at



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

309

interest rates of 9 percent. As the financial situation grew more ominous, the trustees began to question Johnston’s management, though remaining convinced of his devotion to the school and his unstinting labors to move it forward.24 A series of events beginning in late 1963 brought to an early conclusion a presidency that had begun with high hopes. That November the trustees took the unusual step of summoning Johnston to Boston for consultations. There he learned that unauthorized communications from the campus had assailed his leadership. A small coterie among the staff, headed by Dean Sanford, had conveyed doubts about the president’s competence. As a result, the Board was questioning whether to continue his appointment. Johnston expressed dismay that he had not been alerted earlier to what he considered unacceptable behavior by subordinate staff in voicing complaints to the trustees without his knowledge and offered to resign. When the trustees asked him to withhold his resignation pending further consideration by both sides, Johnston returned to Thessaloniki with the issue unresolved.25 There was no doubt that Howard and Jeanne Johnston had developed a deep attachment to Greece and to Anatolia and had given their best efforts to strengthening the College. However, this unexpected setback caused them to reevaluate their personal and professional future. Having earlier anticipated a career in higher education, Johnston now came to reconsider that prospect. Anatolia’s Board asked him to remain but would not agree to the long-term appointment he set as a condition. Despite declarations to the trustees from Anatolia’s Greek directors, its Advisory Committee, and many of the staff urging that his tenure be continued, Johnston insisted upon resigning.26 Upon returning from Boston, the president had quickly terminated the appointment of William Sanford and his Greek wife and Anatolia teacher, Ariadne Koumari-Sanford, actions confirmed unanimously by the administrative council and approved by the trustees. The Board also accepted the resignation of recently appointed trustee Richard Quaintance, NECA staff member, who had reported on his extended campus visit earlier that year. Throughout this administrative crisis, Dean Mary Ingle played a major role in maintaining school spirit and discipline, closely aided by the Greek director of the Boys School, Anastasios Georgopapadakos, together with his Girls School counterpart, Olga Platiridou.27 In order to assess the situation at first hand and reassure the College community, the Board dispatched to the campus two of its members in early 1964. Floyd Black, returning for his second visit, was joined by Nicholas Culolias, a Greek American attorney residing then in Athens. They met with faculty, conferred with the president, and reported their findings to the Board. Dr. Black issued a statement on behalf of the

310

Chapter 9

trustees that decried harmful criticism and maneuvering against the president and the administration by several persons both within and outside the college community.28 The Johnstons completed the 1964 spring term with the same devotion to Anatolia that they had displayed the previous six years, graciously welcoming their successors that June. They then returned to the United States and to Howard’s new appointment as vice president for academic affairs and professor of political science at Iowa Wesleyan College. Upon their departure, the trustees officially expressed their appreciation for the outstanding contribution Dr. and Mrs. Johnston had made to the College. Indeed, the consensus of most of Anatolia’s personnel, as well as the trustees, seemed to hold that the Johnstons were people of sterling character and fully devoted to their duties. Howard had assumed responsibility without experience in either secondary education or financial administration, and without background in the region or its culture. His trusting disposition may have proved vulnerable to manipulation by some so inclined. The duties shouldered by Anatolia’s president appeared to require a forceful personality possessing management skills and able to exercise and delegate authority effectively.29 PINEWOOD SCHOOLS—THESSALONIKI INTERNATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL The arrival in Thessaloniki of American and European governmental and business representatives with their families posed the need for the education of their children. Since their residence was normally too brief to gain the language skills to enroll in Greek schools, they mostly sought an English-language curriculum to prepare for future training. When the need first arose just after the Greek civil war, Anatolia had provided a modest solution by organizing primary instruction. Piney Woods School accommodated a few youngsters in a temporary structure before being relocated to the American Farm School in 1957. From the late 1950s, the growing Anglo-American community confronted the need for expanded instruction to encompass secondary studies and for improved school facilities. Initially, a new division at Anatolia was proposed for native English speakers who would pursue some classes separately but join Anatolia’s Greek students for other lessons while participating fully in school life. However, the newly formed Pinewood School Association concluded that a separate institution was preferable and succeeded in gaining permission from the Greek Ministry of Education to operate a new tax-exempt school for foreign students.



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

311

The first classes of Thessaloniki International High School, commonly known as “Ti-Hi,” began in 1959 in renovated barracks on the Anatolia campus pending the erection of a new building. Its first students shared the College’s library and athletic facilities, and a few resided in Anatolia’s dormitories. By 1962 enrollment had reached forty-four in the high school and thirty-seven in the elementary department still housed at the American Farm School. Largely through the efforts of U.S. Consul General Robert Folsom, Pinewood succeeded in becoming incorporated in the state of Delaware as a nonprofit organization and in obtaining U.S. government funding for a new school building. The first principal of the high school was Mrs. Vivian Anagnostaki, a U.S. citizen holding a master’s degree from the University of Michigan who also taught periodically at Anatolia.30 Largely because of legislation banning property ownership by aliens in border regions, including Greek Macedonia, Pinewood requested that Anatolia permanently host the new school. The College fortunately had acquired its campus before those restrictions were enacted. Howard Johnston, who as Anatolia’s president served as an ex officio member of Pinewood’s Board and whose two sons attended the school, endorsed the proposal enthusiastically. Anatolia’s trustees, after carefully considering the legal and educational ramifications, consented to a plan whereby Pinewood would finance and occupy a building owned by Anatolia on the two-acre site where former barracks still stood. One factor favoring this arrangement was the designated location at the campus’s western extreme, where any friction between the activities of the two schools would be minimal. Anatolia leased the structure rent free to Pinewood for twenty years with provision for renewal for another twenty. The new building housing both the elementary and the high school welcomed students for the fall term of 1963. Pinewood’s ensuing relationship with Anatolia, though amiable, remained a distant one due to the separate clienteles, curricula, and cultures of the two schools. One notable exception was the College’s boarding community, which accommodated increasing numbers of Pinewood students. They included the children of Americans and other nationalities posted to the Balkans or Near East, particularly technical personnel working in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. A contrasting example was the daughter of the Japanese Ambassador to Bulgaria. Accepting Pinewood boarders, whose numbers reached fifty-seven by 1973, proved financially advantageous to Anatolia. On the other hand, an ethnically diverse dormitory population attending very different schools posed challenges to the staffs of the two dormitories, headed at this time by Despina Lazaridou and Aristides Kyriakakis.

312

Chapter 9

Pinewood’s enrollment rose steadily with the expansion of Thessaloniki’s international community. Eventually gaining educational certification in the United States, the school provided a vital solution by preparing hundreds of students for further studies outside of Greece. These included, notably, most of the children of Anatolia’s American staff.31 ROBERT HAYDEN BRINGS SOUND MANAGEMENT Anatolia’s trustees, upon receiving Howard Johnston’s resignation, promptly appointed a search committee. After considering several applicants, it proposed unanimously Robert I. Hayden as Anatolia’s seventh president. A graduate of Northwestern University, he had earned a Masters Degree in Education from Stanford University. For sixteen years Hayden served in California public schools as teacher, counselor, curriculum director, and principal. In fact, he was the first Anatolia president to bring extensive experience in secondary education at American schools. His wife, Reta, was also an experienced secondary educator. At the time of his appointment, Hayden was completing a two-year assignment as Deputy Commissioner of Education for the U.S. government in the Virgin Islands.32 The reigning imperative for choosing a new leader was to restore the school’s financial solvency, upon which, Chairman Chapman asserted, its ultimate survival depended. Everett Stephens, head of the search committee, reported that his team had sought “a good secondary school educator, a good administrator, a good host, a good ambassador but, above all, a fund raiser.” Those priorities corresponded to the major goals that Hayden pursued over the next eight years.33 President Hayden soon came to perceive, however, that those goals were not achievable under prevailing conditions; in fact, they had proven in the recent past to be mutually inconsistent. How could any president competently administer the College in Thessaloniki and, at the same time, develop a solid base of supporters in the United States, the school’s principal source of financial contributions? This dilemma had proved formidable for all of Hayden’s postwar predecessors. The solution he found rested upon two premises. The first was an effective administrative structure which would enable the president to oversee the campus operation despite being absent for significant periods of time. The second was an efficient fundraising organization in the United States able to harness his efforts there and also carry on during his absence. Hayden’s first year was especially demanding as he endeavored to become oriented to a new country while assuming management of an unfamiliar school with inadequate administrative staff. The key positions



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

313

of Boys School dean and business manager had been left vacant. Given those circumstances, he proceeded to assemble an administrative team that would strengthen the school’s operational efficiency and allow him extended absences to pursue Anatolia’s needs on the other side of the Atlantic. At the same time, it was essential that the authority of the presidency be fully restored following the unfortunate events of the previous year. The first major step toward rationalizing the school’s financial administration was to appoint a young Englishman, David Willis, as acting business manager. Trained in civil engineering, Willis had worked for the Church World Service, carrying out development projects in villages of northwestern Greece before joining Anatolia’s staff six months earlier as technical assistant. Impressed by his quick grasp of financial matters, Hayden confirmed the appointment the following year. He came to rely heavily upon Willis’s exceptional industry and problem-solving skills.34 The next major appointment was to be that of Boys School dean, a position held previously by a series of American educators. However, unanticipated events deterred that assignment and produced instead a reshaping of Anatolia’s administrative structure. The trustee’s Executive Committee had resolved that Anatolia must meet new challenges by abandoning the model of a “mission school” with a religious dimension. Bob Hayden was instructed to enhance the College’s financial stability, rationalize its administration, and bring it into alignment with Greece’s ongoing modernization. One step toward achieving those goals was to move the Boys and Girls Schools into closer alignment with common policies and practices under the president’s direction. Early initiatives included reducing the time allotted for daily assemblies, then termed “Chapel”; changing the criteria for assigning classrooms by eliminating student “homerooms”; uniting academic departments in the two schools under a single chair; increasing coeducational activities; and introducing more uniform regulations in the girls and boys dormitories. This new assertion of presidential authority quickly brought Hayden into conflict with Dean Mary Ingle, who for decades had managed the Girls School with a minimum of supervision. She surprised her colleagues and students by submitting her resignation only a few months after Hayden’s arrival.35 Mary Ingle had come to be regarded as an icon by scores of Girls School graduates. By word and deed she embodied the faith of Anatolia’s missionary founders and for decades had endeavored to transmit their beliefs to successive generations of students. She was loved by many, feared perhaps by some, but by all deeply respected. Carl Compton, when president, had given her free rein to manage the Girls School. If Howard

314

Chapter 9

Johnston had any reservations in that regard, he lacked the administrative muscle to alter established practices. The trustees had encouraged Hayden to modernize the College despite any contrary views held by Dean Ingle. Everett Stephens, chairman of the nominating committee that recommended Hayden’s appointment, advised him before he traveled to Greece for his new duties to be very firm with her: “I, for one, would not be too disturbed if Mary should resign if she found it impossible to get herself in step with the newer thinking of the Board of Trustees. In some ways Mary has been too long in one spot and has not kept abreast of the fast moving trends in the field of education.”36 Ingle herself soon concluded that the new president’s educational tenets and methods were incompatible with her own. However, her decision to resign appears to have been determined, at least in part, by considerations predating Hayden’s appointment. She had earlier expressed concerns about the College’s changing mission and doubts about her own role at the school. Indeed, Anatolia had evolved over time, reflecting both changes in Greek society and the gradual secularization of many American private colleges. It would appear that Ingle sought an educational environment where evangelical values still prevailed. Her new appointment as principal of Baghdad High School, a girls missionary institution in Iraq, seems to have met that desire. As she explained in her letter of resignation, “my basic loyalty is to the United Church of Christ, of which I am an appointed missionary.”37 It was on Hayden’s initiative that the Olympus Hall dormitory was renamed for Mary Ingle, as announced at the 1965 commencement ceremony where her long service to Anatolia was honored. She maintained a friendly correspondence with Hayden and revisited the school periodically, to the immense satisfaction of former students who flocked to welcome her. Many saw Ingle’s departure, following that of the Comptons, as marking the end of an era when Anatolia was a smaller and more intimate school. This concern was perhaps best expressed by Carl Compton, who at this time wrote Hayden in a most cordial vein, acknowledging his responsibility for taking decisions while remarking: “I have felt that Anatolia College has made at least two very distinctive contributions. One has been in developing a spirit of community service, and the other in the influence on individual students due to the close, personal contact between them and the administration. And the American deans are the key people in this effort.” However, Anatolia was heading in a different direction. The trustees proposed to the new president that, in order to bring the two schools into closer alignment and with uniform standards and procedures, a single American vice president should replace the two deans. Hayden fully agreed. Each school would also continue to have a Greek director as re-



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

315

quired by law. In this and other initiatives, Hayden was solidly backed by Chairman John Chapman. The Board further demonstrated its confidence in the president by renewing his appointment in 1967, well ahead of its scheduled expiration.38 Anatolia’s first vice president, Robert W. Musgrove, was an experienced educator who had taught and administered at both elementary and secondary levels in New York State public schools. His new duties were to supervise both the Boys and Girls Schools, in close collaboration with their Greek directors, as well as the dormitories, while exercising overall authority during Hayden’s absences. The president would continue to oversee all college operations, but would now be able to devote greater time to institutional planning, public relations, and especially fundraising, both in the United States and Greece. Musgrove proved to be an indispensable member of Anatolia’s new team and introduced a range of administrative improvements. Over the following years, Anatolia’s management gained unprecedented efficiency through the skill and dedication of its newly appointed leaders. Together with the Greek directors, Anastasios Georgopapadakos and Olga Platiridou, they formed the Administrative Council whose weekly meetings set College policies within the confines of Greek educational regulations.39 Enjoying confidence in his administrative team, from the fall of 1965 Hayden was able to absent himself for annual fundraising trips to selected areas of the United States. His strategic objective was to establish regional centers of support across the country. The key to success was finding individuals in each locality among resident trustees, alumni, and other friends of the College able and willing to rally supporters and prepare the groundwork for the president’s visits. By his fourth year of campaigning, Hayden’s itinerary had come to encompass ten cities from the East Coast to California. His presentation, accompanied by illustrations, of Anatolia’s mission and accomplishments at clubs, churches, and homes won adherents. Whenever possible, he met individually with potential donors of consequence. One early success was a gift of $40,000 from the Doris Duke Foundation in California. The city of Chicago proved to be a particularly fruitful source of support, due in large measure to the sustained efforts by trustee Ion Caloger and his wife, Ethel, in drawing substantial contributors from the Greek American community. By Hayden’s sixth year of such endeavors (1970), the annual income to the school from stateside fundraising surpassed $200,000, nearly four times the sum before those efforts had commenced.40 As important as the president’s trips were for establishing a network of supporters across the United States, they were only one prerequisite for generating substantial new income. It was equally essential that Anatolia

316

Chapter 9

have an effective fundraising organization in the United States. Until this time, the trustees had considered that ambitious task to be largely beyond their own purview. A revitalized Board led by John Chapman now embraced the challenge. Despite heavy responsibilities at Harvard Business School, Chapman devoted endless hours to finding new resources for Anatolia. As he explained to Hayden, the trustees had “made some radical changes from past thinking and planning” for devising a new fundraising strategy. Recognizing that Anatolia had moved away from its past as a “mission school” when “the bulk of its support came from church groups,” they now sought to attract new types of donors to Anatolia’s revamped undertaking in Greece. Chapman was assisted in this effort by trustee colleagues, particularly in approaching foundations and corporations for support.41 As it became apparent that a more efficient administrative structure would be needed in the United States, two major steps were taken toward that end. First, given the minor role that NECA had come to play in promotional efforts, Anatolia’s U.S. office moved from New York to Boston, giving the Board of Trustees more direct access and control. The new office also took over from NECA the recruitment of American staff for the College, with Everett Stephens shouldering much of that task. Anatolia continued to use NECA’s accounting and purchasing services. Second, a director for U.S. fundraising was appointed to marshal professional expertise behind the efforts of the Board chair and President Hayden. DeFred G. Folts, retired director of placement at Harvard’s Graduate School of Business Administration, initially assumed this responsibility. Over the following years, the small Boston staff worked to expand support from foundations, companies, schools and individuals, organized the president’s annual fundraising trips, maintained records of donors, and issued periodic newsletters as well as annual appeals for contributions. By 1968 its contact list had tripled to over six thousand names.42 Through close coordination of efforts among trustees, the Boston office, and President Hayden, Anatolia’s supporters increased steadily. Notable among these were American firms engaged in Greece. The headquarters of those companies in the United States and their representatives in Greece, mostly located in Athens, became leading targets for Anatolia’s promotional endeavors. On a single trip to Athens, Hayden contacted twenty-one American firms, most of which became donors. Anatolia’s tax-exempt status under both U.S. and Greek revenue laws proved an essential asset for this initiative.43 The result of close and systematic cooperation between the trustees and the president in managing the school’s finances while also generating enhanced income through donations was to restore Anatolia’s economic



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

317

health. At the beginning of Hayden’s tenure, the school’s accumulated deficit exceeded $110, 000. Seven years later, Board Treasurer Thiessen was able to report that it had been replaced by a substantial surplus. In addition, the school’s endowment had grown, while some long-standing debts in the United States were liquidated. Moreover, this positive result was achieved despite a sharp decline in USAID grants to Anatolia for operating expenses. There is no question but that Treasurer Thiessen’s insistence upon stricter budget controls played an important role. Other contributing factors included compensation from the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission in the amount of $97,000 for wartime damages to the campus as well as continuing grants from the Sofia American Schools, which brought Anatolia $236,000 over a period of twelve years. The estate of Elias Soter (Soteriades) ’13 provided a bequest of $300,000. The ongoing struggle to achieve financial order, despite renewed price inflation in Greece, weighed heavily upon the president, who confided to Chairman Chapman about the “tremendous strain” of his office. Clearly Hayden brought exceptional discipline and initiative to the task, aided substantially by Vice President Musgrove and Business Manager Willis.44 Another effort to generate income resulted in the organization of summer sessions for Greek American youth in cooperation with the American Hellenic Progressive Association (AHEPA). More than eighty teenagers attended “Summer in Greece” in 1966 and 1969. Residing on campus, they became better acquainted with their ancestral land and its culture through classes supplemented by tours of the countryside. Such collaborative ventures with Greek American groups helped to draw Anatolia closer to the Orthodox community in the United States and to allay any reservations about its evangelical past. This consideration, though seldom mentioned, remained in the minds of Anatolia’s leaders as they sought to broaden support across the ethnic and religious spectrum, reaching out to Orthodox groups while retaining assistance from Protestant organizations.45 One of the administration’s goals was to continue and, if possible, expand scholarship awards. Individuals and companies in Greece and the United States were solicited to assume financial responsibility for one or more students for the seven-year course of studies. Particular emphasis was given to recruiting promising applicants from provincial districts as “regional” (later “national”) scholars. Greek American friends were drawn to the prospect of funding or even endowing grants for aspiring youth from their family’s place of origin. For example, the noted entrepreneur Thomas A. Pappas supported a series of scholars from Filiatra village in the western Peloponnesus. Similarly, American companies with operations in provincial areas often sponsored scholars from those localities.

318

Chapter 9

Bringing talented but financially disadvantaged youths from outlying areas of the country broadened the student body’s social and geographic profile. Since the regional examinations normally drew scores of applicants, the top competitors tended to be of exceptional ability. To illustrate, ninety-two candidates took the exams in the town of Florina in 1968 for a single scholarship and 144 in Drama for only two places. Anatolia became better known throughout the country by virtue of these well-publicized awards. While the majority of national scholarships went to youngsters from the northern provinces, competitions were held also in southern Greece where many Greek Americans originated as well as the Aegean islands. The account by a faculty team sent to Heraklion, Crete, in 1967 to conduct a national scholarship examination seems worth relating: Our teachers who were giving the examinations noticed a little girl who seemed to be having difficulty keeping awake even though she was concentrating very hard on the examinations. They wondered about her and were rather surprised when she came out second highest among the students who took part in the competition. On the following afternoon, the Anatolia faculty team began to visit the homes of the five finalists. The last of the five was located in a small village perched on the side of a mountain seventeen kilometers from Heraklion. It was raining when they arrived and as they approached the road that led up to the mountain, the taxi driver told them he could go no further as the road was nearly washed out. Reluctantly they got out of the taxi and as they did so a little donkey passed headed up toward the village. On it was the same tired little girl. She was with her grandfather, and they were just returning to the village after a full day’s journey from Heraklion. This explained why she was so sleepy during the examination. Fotini had spent more than twelve hours on the back of her family’s only donkey in traveling the seventeen kilometers to the examination center. The team began to follow the donkey up to the village where the little girl lived. Walking through the driving rain, they finally reached Fotini’s home. A wretched home with a tile roof, a dirt floor, two windows, an open-hearth fireplace in the corner, and an open hole for the toilet. Fotini’s mother and father were clean and simple people, and they were trembling with anxiety for their daughter. With typical Greek hospitality Mr. and Mrs. Alexaki got out their best food and serving things. A few neighbors helped by bringing glassware and the visitors were served bread and tomatoes, plus a little wine. That fall, when Fotini arrived at the school with her father, the first thing she did was turn the lights of the dormitory on and off. A great expression of delight radiated from her face. At first we wondered why, and then we realized that her village was without electricity. This was her first experience with a light switch. She gained ten pounds during her first month in the boarding department.46



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

319

Fotini Alexaki from Tylissos village proved to be an able student and graduated from Anatolia in 1973. Her scholarship had been sponsored by the College Women’s Club of Berkeley, California.47 National scholarships also served to bolster the dormitory enrollment, thereby further relieving the budget. By 1971, fifty-one national scholars joined “day scholars,” partial tuition awardees, and children of staff, for a total of 187 recipients of financial aid. The tradition of students defraying a portion of their expenses through campus work continued with opportunities for as many as seventy in the library, print shop, dormitories, offices, telephone switchboard, campus gardens, and the school canteen, including summer jobs. Among the school’s objectives when assigning such tasks was to instill respect for manual and technical labor. One student work venue, the print shop, was unique among schools in Greece in producing teaching aids not otherwise available, especially laboratory manuals prepared by the science faculty and geared to the school’s own facilities. It also provided an inexpensive means for preparing student publications, including the annual yearbook, and selected publications by Anatolia teachers. The print shop’s capabilities expanded notably at this time by the acquisition of a new Heidelberg Press through the courtesy of the Meredith Foundation in Des Moines, Iowa, and Anatolia trustee Horace Benstead, whose name the shop was given.48 An outstanding example of scholarship students bonding with the College featured a pair of day scholars from the class of 1967. Yiannis Lalatsis and Christos Plousios both passed into the University of Thessaloniki, returned to Anatolia as philology teachers, and concluded their careers there as lyceum directors. A further means for improving finances was increased enrollment. During the early 1960s, the student body had grown from six hundred to a little over seven hundred. Hayden, shortly after his arrival, estimated that Anatolia’s facilities could accommodate an enrollment of about one thousand. The College’s prestige, together with improvement in the country’s economy, facilitated expansion. Hayden’s calculation proved correct; the student body passed the one thousand mark in 1970. An enlarged enrollment, of course, brought other consequences. For example, although the number of students granted financial assistance increased, the proportion of the student body receiving such aid fell to about 15 percent, less than half the prewar figure. In general, it could be said (and often was) that by doubling enrollment during the twenty-five years since its postwar reopening, Anatolia lost some important aspects of the intimacy among students and teachers that marked its earlier years.49

320

Chapter 9

A larger enrollment, including more boarders, also increased the responsibility for students’ physical well-being. Until the mid-1960s, health needs were served mainly by two resident nurses in the respective dormitories, assisted when necessary by a doctor in downtown Thessaloniki who performed an annual examination of all students. Seeking to enhance the quality of its medical care, Anatolia engaged a resident physician in 1964. Dr. Vasilis Sinanoglou trained at the American University of Beirut and the University of Colorado and served as physician for Robert College before relocating with his family to Thessaloniki following the violence against the Greek minority in Istanbul in 1955. His wife, Irene, became secretary to Anatolia’s president. Dr. Sinanoglou established a dispensary and acted as the College’s doctor for over a decade.50 Another significant response by Hayden to the trustees’ directive that he prove not only a good educator and administrator but also host, ambassador, and, above all, fundraiser, was the avid cultivation of social contacts in Thessaloniki and Athens. In this task, he was assisted enthusiastically by Reta Hayden. The couple developed close ties with Greek and American commercial and governmental figures. They entertained tirelessly at their campus residence and traveled to the capital for interaction with business and diplomatic personnel. Reta was elected president of the American Women of Greece, the leading social and philanthropic group among resident American ladies. Such endeavors helped to make the College better known while opening opportunities to solicit scholarships and other support. A major occasion was the visit in May 1966 by King Constantine and Queen Anna Marie. The festivities, including the traditional Field Day gymnastics exhibition, drew more than three thousand guests to the campus, including the minister of education, Orthodox Church officials, and the U.S. ambassador.51 CONFRONTING THE JUNTA Although the trials of World War II and the civil war had become more distant with the passage of time, the 1960s brought new political tumult as Greece’s fragile democratic institutions proved unable to withstand fierce rivalries among ideological camps and interest groups. The decade’s early years held out promise of social improvements under the Center Union government headed by George Papandreou that took office in 1964. Particularly encouraging were reforms introduced by Evangelos Papanoutsos, one of Greece’s foremost educators, who served as secretary general of the Education Ministry. These reforms included dividing the high school into two three-year segments, gymnasium and



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

321

lyceum; using the popular (demotic) version of the Greek language; teaching ancient Greek texts in modern translation; and giving greater emphasis to mathematics and the physical and social sciences. Hayden called on Papanoutsos, gained his verbal concurrence with Anatolia’s pending request for greater freedom to deviate from the standard curriculum, and welcomed the secretary general as key speaker at the 1965 commencement ceremony. However, the Papandreou government fell soon after and the intended reforms, never fully implemented, were nullified by the military dictatorship that seized power in April 1967.52 As a private institution incorporated abroad and permitted to operate under Greek law as a “foreign school,” Anatolia had no legal right to intrude in political matters. President Hayden was so reminded shortly after the Junta seized control. His fairly innocuous address to the student body expressing hope for the early return of democracy provoked a prompt rebuke by the Inspector of Foreign Schools.53 During the early months of the dictatorship, school life remained largely undisturbed, though some Anatolia teachers voiced concern about expressing themselves freely in class lest they be reported to the authorities. The reversal of the Papanoutsos reforms also proved disconcerting, especially the return to the anachronistic katharevousa as the main language of instruction. Although in most respects classes proceeded as usual, anxieties rose when an altercation between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus in November 1967 sparked momentary fears of war, prompting the administration to prepare an emergency plan for closing the school. A large U.S. flag was painted on the roof of Macedonia Hall in case of air strikes, and provisions were stored in the tunnels beneath the campus before the crisis was resolved. Politics impinged further on the College the following month when King Constantine’s abortive attempt to overthrow the Junta led to his departure and the demise of Greece’s monarchy. One of the failed coup’s leaders, an army general, happened to be the father of an Anatolia student. His arrest led to the family’s departure from Thessaloniki and their son’s withdrawal from the school.54 Despite these unsettling events, the dictatorship during its first year made little impact upon Anatolia, though its practice of dismissing from public employment real or imagined opponents caused concern. Hayden reported to Boston the “purge” of many outstanding teachers from schools and universities “whose only crime was past advocacy of liberal (not communist) ideas.” He lamented the “repression and injustice in the air.”55 The “purge” struck Anatolia at the beginning of the 1968–1969 school year. The Inspector of Foreign Schools conveyed the Education Ministry’s refusal to approve the reappointment of Anatolia’s Boys School director because of alleged communist sympathies, while warning that

322

Chapter 9

the dismissal of other teachers should be anticipated. Anastasios Georgopapadakos had been a faculty member for twenty-two years and for the previous eleven served as director, a position mandated by Greek law. His scholarly works on the Greek language were widely esteemed and he enjoyed the respect of his colleagues. His response now was a written reply to the Ministry rejecting all charges. Hayden was deeply troubled by the order. He respected and relied heavily upon Georgopapadakos. In his judgment, their frequent interaction had demonstrated beyond all doubt the falseness of the allegations. Moreover, the director had received certification of his “political reliability” from the Ministry of Education and the Security Police. Despite Ministry orders to designate a replacement, Hayden demurred, keeping the office vacant while assigning some of its duties to English teacher Allan Duane appointed to the interim position of director for Special Services.56 Over the following months, Hayden, backed by John Chapman, waged a campaign to reverse the Ministry’s order and restore Georgopapadakos to his post. When approaches to local officials failed, Hayden prevailed upon U.S. Ambassador Phillips Talbot to raise the matter with authorities in Athens. Meanwhile, Chapman pursued it with the Greek ambassador in Washington, D.C., and with State Department officials. Similar Junta treatment of personnel at the American Farm School and at Pierce College in Athens prompted consultation with those institutions. Hayden persisted in his efforts to reverse what he considered a deep injustice, at one point boldly inquiring of Embassy officials whether they were truly resolved to press the issue at the highest levels or were willing to concede defeat. All endeavors came to an end in March 1969 when the College was informed that Prime Minister Papadopoulos himself had confirmed the ruling. Anatolia was thereupon ordered to appoint a new director; otherwise the Ministry itself would do so. Hayden now had no alternative but to conform to the regime’s command. As Chapman had pointed out earlier, the College’s main obligation to its faculty and students was to remain open and function as normally as possible. Accordingly, Hayden designated mathematics teacher Constantine Botsakis to assume the director’s duties. He could at least take satisfaction that Georgopapadakos was allowed to remain on the faculty and that no other Anatolia teachers were dismissed as was threatened earlier. Georgopapadakos weathered this ordeal with characteristic dignity.57 Although during the seven years of dictatorship Anatolia experienced no other encounter with the government as invasive as that described above, it did endure other impositions. These included the Junta’s periodically freezing private school fees while at the same time increasing teachers’ salaries; changing the curriculum to allow fewer English classes,



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

323

eliminate instruction in civics, and increase the required hours of ancient Greek and Latin; mandating talks to students conveying the reigning values of the regime; banning elections for student councils; and requiring church attendance. These and other encroachments, following the Georgopapadakos incident, caused the president and trustees to seriously consider under what circumstances Anatolia might be forced to conclude that its mission in Greece was no longer viable. Only repeated assurances from the Ministry of Education that it valued highly Anatolia’s contribution to Greek education served to relieve somewhat this major concern.58 There were other perennial issues that Anatolia’s leaders over the years had endeavored to resolve and which Hayden now pursued avidly. Many of them came under the rubric of “deviations” (i.e., exceptions from the tightly regulated state curriculum). These aimed mostly at permitting the College to offer more hours of English instruction and to teach more subjects in English, as well as to include courses not part of the official program, such as psychology, botany, hygiene, and home economics. Although the Education Ministry had authorized such exceptions for many years, its stipulation that their approval be renewed annually led to recurrent encounters with often hesitant officials. Shifts in the country’s leadership, in its governing ideology, or in Greek American relations could influence attitudes toward what might be seen as a special dispensation for an American school. The personal inclinations of ministry officials, especially the Inspector of Foreign Schools, often impacted the way in which provisions governing Anatolia’s operation were interpreted. Aside from pursuing the annual renewal of Anatolia’s “deviations,” Hayden went further by proposing a bold scheme for the College to operate as an “experimental school” with an innovative curriculum. The first phase envisioned a restructured science program with emphasis on laboratory exercises. Despite submitting studies documenting the plan and gaining encouragement from the Education Minister himself, the College’s proposal was rejected in 1970. It became evident that the extent to which Anatolia might depart from the state curriculum was narrowly limited. This left scant prospect that the existing government would ever permit the even more ambitious innovations that Anatolia continued to aspire to, such as postsecondary business studies, an elementary school, and an enhanced legal status equivalent to that of the public schools. The College seemed to have no alternative but to simply offer the finest education possible under prevailing limitations until such time as circumstances should change for the better.59 As in former years, Anatolia pursued this goal by seeking to employ the ablest instructors and provide them with the best possible environment and incentives for inspiring their students. A graduate of those years records how many of his teachers profoundly influenced their students, .

324

Chapter 9

especially in the fields of Greek language, literature, and history. Ioannis Papinkis ’69 cites the pedagogic skills and strong devotion to students by philology teachers such as Anastasios Georgopapadakos, Nikolas Papahadzis, Ioannis Paparallis, and Theodore Mavropoulos. They succeeded in nurturing the intellectual growth of their pupils while conveying Greece’s rich cultural heritage. They also contrived in subtle ways to neutralize the Junta’s reactionary intervention in the curriculum, particularly through their deft handling of the controversial issue of Greek-language usage.60 English instruction, always a high priority, had been handicapped by the rapid turnover of teachers, including department heads. This pattern changed for the better with Edgar Sather’s seven-year tenure (1964–1971) as chairman, the longest until then. A serious effort was made to bring American teachers for at least three-year appointments. Two teachers who arrived at this time were to remain for their entire careers, Alice Eppinga and Samuel (Peter) Fay. The average length of service was extended also by fewer Fulbright appointments, which were usually of only one year’s duration. The last Fulbright English-language teacher arrived in 1973. Among the young English teachers arriving at this time was George Draper, who with his wife Charlotte began a period of outstanding service to the American-sponsored schools in Thessaloniki that continued until the end of the twentieth century. An exceptional appointee was Sumie Kawai from Japan, following training and experience in the United States. She taught art at Anatolia for four years. It was in 1971 that George Paralis concluded a distinguished career begun before the war. Through his series of watercolors he had become one of Thessaloniki’s leading painters. Anatolia’s renovated art studio was later named in his honor. Most of Anatolia’s foreign teachers and administrators, several Greek staff members, and dormitory personnel resided on campus. By the early 1970s their numbers had reached approximately thirty, over one-third of whom were joined by their families, for a total of at least fifty campus residents. Student boarders numbered 150, making a campus community of over two hundred. An essential feature of Anatolia’s education continued to be its extracurricular activities. Faculty members were encouraged to organize pursuits that would help adolescents develop skills and broaden their worldview. The thirty-two student clubs ranged from theater, art, music, and debate to the sciences, archeology, welfare, and athletics. School publications included the yearbook, a student newspaper, and intermittent literary journals bearing various titles. The Welfare and Christian Efforts Clubs continued the tradition of aiding humanitarian causes. Alumni frequently recall how experiences outside the classroom helped them to form interests and talents that enriched their later lives.61



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

325

Among the most popular activities was the mixed chorale composed of fifty students from the upper grades, led by music teacher Anastasios Pappas. The Anatolia Chorale became well known and was frequently invited to perform at special occasions beyond the campus. The inspiring director’s sudden death in 1970 came as a great blow, moving the student body to fervently request that the auditorium where the chorale performed be named in his memory. That building, however, built by the occupying German army and subsequently renovated, had already been given the name of the former Merzifon dean, Charlotte Willard. A solution was found by renaming Personnel House for Willard, thereby freeing the auditorium to become Tassos Pappas Hall. The previous year the Alumni Hall dormitory had been renamed in honor of Carl Compton.62 Anatolia’s success during these trying years was evidenced not only by its expanding enrollment but also by the admission of its graduates to Greek and foreign universities. School records show that during the decade of the 1960s, 776 Anatolia graduates went on to some form of higher education. Of that number, 347 entered Greek public institutions, 184 continued their studies in the United States, 101 opted to study in European countries, and 72 girls enrolled in Anatolia’s Secretarial School. Vice President Musgrove organized counseling for applicants to American colleges, an essential service given the lack of familiarity of most Greek youths with U.S. institutions and admission procedures. Those in need of financial aid were assisted in applying for scholarships. It was at this time, incidentally, that Anatolia dropped the designation of Junior College from its English-language diploma and other school documents.63 The opportunity to study at American colleges reshaped the lives of the approximately twenty graduates who succeeded annually in gaining admission. The national scholars from rural districts figured prominently in this group. Entering Anatolia through competitive exams from among a multitude of candidates, they were mostly both talented and highly motivated. Their families’ provincial locations and modest financial circumstances often tended to limit their prospects within Greece. A series of exceptional youths were thereby enabled to study at some of America’s leading institutions, usually with full scholarships. It is noteworthy that a high percentage of those who studied in the United States elected to remain abroad, unlike their classmates who chose training in Western Europe. One national scholar who did return to render service to his country merits special mention. Gikas A. Hardouvelis ’74 from the Peloponnesian village of Poulithra succeeded in winning a full scholarship to Harvard University where he earned B.A. and M.Sc. degrees, followed by a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley. After holding positions at Columbia and Rutgers Universities, he returned to Greece to

326

Chapter 9

pursue a career in academia and banking. Hardouvelis visited Anatolia frequently to deliver lectures and was appointed to its Board of Trustees. In 2014 he became Greece’s Minister of Finance, the highest government post held by an Anatolia graduate to date 64 The great majority of graduates remained in Greece and aspired to enter the leading professions or take over family businesses. The essential requirement in most cases was a university degree. The College had a proud record of preparing graduates for the most selective professional schools, particularly medicine, law, and engineering, where they commonly ranked among the highest scorers in the entrance exams. As Greece’s economy prospered in the 1960s, a growing middle class generated an increasing demand for higher education, a demand beyond the capacity of the country’s few universities to meet. The soaring number of applicants resulted in a steady decline in admission rates, reaching approximately one in four by the end of the decade. The competitiveness of university entrance posed challenges to families seeking to ensure their children’s advancement in a society with limited occupational options. This new reality gave rise to certain practices that impinged ominously upon the country’s educational system. Most notable was the proliferation of frontistiria, for-profit “cram schools” that coached candidates for entrance exams. A related practice was private lessons by teachers of exam subjects. Such reinforcement, costly as it was and of little educational worth, came to be seen by many students and parents as essential for university admission. As competition mounted, the late teens became a time of exceptional pressure and challenge for many Greek youths. The widespread aspiration to higher education was undoubtedly one factor contributing to the rise in Anatolia’s enrollment, given its graduates’ success rate in university admissions. On the other hand, the growing practice of outside preparation through frontistiria and private lessons undermined regular school instruction while implying that it was inadequate. Students in the junior and senior years frequently gave excessive time and effort to such aids in anticipation of boosting their university prospects. This often caused them to neglect their English study as well as extracurricular activities, thus undermining two of Anatolia’s major purposes. The College endeavored to check these tendencies by such measures as requiring faculty approval for any student to engage in private lessons with an Anatolia teacher. Newly appointed teachers signed pledges to keep any instructional activities outside the College within strict limits. Boarding students were not allowed to travel to the city to attend frontistiria. But many such practices resulted from social and market forces largely beyond Anatolia’s control. Temptations to engage in outside employment arose for only a portion of the faculty. Those teaching upper-grade subjects that were tested



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

327

for university admission found their services in high demand, with opportunities to augment their income by evening and weekend coaching. Consequently, some teachers sought to minimize their time on campus by avoiding duties beyond the classroom as well as extracurricular activities. Such circumstances differentiated them from colleagues teaching lower grades or “minor” subjects not tested for university admission. Many potential abuses thus arose from the artificially high cost of university entrance. These circumstances complicated for many years Anatolia’s mission of providing its students with the highest quality education, instilling ethical values, generating a broad worldview, and helping them to develop skills and talents across a wide spectrum of activities. At one point, a faculty committee entertained the prospect of the College establishing its own internal frontistirion, as some private schools had done but finally advised against it. Anatolia was particularly proud of those students who succeeded in gaining university admission solely on the basis of their regular school studies.65 A significant revision of Anatolia’s program at this time was the cessation of its preparatory year. Since its early years in Greece, the College had required most students to remain for seven years, in contrast to the general six-year standard. The introductory year was designed primarily to provide a foundation in the English language. However, changing circumstances had led to modifications of that requirement. Given that a number of private language schools had come to offer English instruction, applicants who passed an Anatolia language exam were allowed to bypass the “prep year.” In addition, the College itself had organized summer instruction to prepare candidates for that exam. Many parents, seeking to avoid the additional year’s tuition payment, took advantage of such options. Consequently, fewer students every year had come to enroll in the prep year. Notable exceptions were the national scholars from rural areas without access to English preparation or the means to pay for it. Anatolia’s administration wrestled with the issue for some time before finally abolishing the requirement in 1971. Henceforth, all entering students were tested in English before being assigned to classes according to their level of proficiency.66 The beginning of the 1970s found Anatolia in remarkably good shape. Its enrollment had reached new heights, its finances were stable, and the campus was in fine condition. Those results had been achieved in only a few years and despite a dismal political context that grew steadily worse. They were due largely to the close cooperation among highly committed individuals, most notably the school administration, including its Greek directors, and the trustees. Much credit was due to President Hayden for building an effective administrative team in Greece while leading,

328

Chapter 9

together with John Chapman, a dynamic fundraising operation in the United States. The new decade brought swift changes among most of the key participants. Bob Musgrove completed his five-year appointment and departed in the summer of 1970 to resume his career in the United States. The following year, David Willis returned to England after seven years of ably reordering the school’s finances. Edgar Sather ended seven years as English department head. That same year, Konstantinos Botsakis passed away after twenty-four years at Anatolia, the last two as Boys School director. Olga Platiridou’s retirement ended her long tenure as Greek director of the Girls School. Equally significant, John Chapman concluded his service of fifteen years as trustee and eleven as chairman. His departing letter cited Anatolia’s transformation from a church-supported institution to an independent college sustained by the fundraising efforts of its trustees in close cooperation with the president. The College honored his contribution by naming a new faculty residence “Chapman Hall.” His duties were now assumed by Everett Stephens.67 From the team that had managed Anatolia during the last half of the 1960s, enduring the early years of dictatorship, only Bob Hayden remained. After six years of service, he considered himself to be fully committed to the College. It was Bob and Reta Hayden’s intention to continue until retirement; they even planned to acquire a home in Greece for their later years. His one hesitation, as he confided to Chapman, was that he and Everett Stephens had experienced a “few rather serious altercations” over the years. Nevertheless, he expressed his intent to establish a good working relationship with the new chairman.68 Chapman had managed masterfully the relationship between the trustees and the president. At times he was called upon to resolve disagreements stemming largely from the cultural as well as geographical distance between Boston and Thessaloniki. Though trustees were urged to visit so as to become better acquainted with the realities of a school operating in Greece, their professional responsibilities rarely allowed them to travel so far. Only in 1969, one year before retiring from the Board, did Chapman himself manage to make his first visit in forty years to Thessaloniki. Hayden was compelled, therefore, to rely mostly on written communications when endeavoring to explain to the faraway trustees the conditions under which Anatolia had to be managed. He concluded one report to the Executive Committee with this observation: “Finally, I must point out to the Board that the President of Anatolia College is operating under totally different circumstances than is the administrator of an American private school. He is circumscribed by legal, political, governmental, and social conditions which can fluctuate from year to year. He must take ad-



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

329

vantage of every opening in what may seem to be an erratic manner. The administrator in the United States, while certainly burdened by financial problems, has―by contrast―much wider latitude to plan and execute in an orderly manner.”69 The relationship between the president and the new chairman quickly deteriorated. Only a few months after Chapman stepped down, Hayden confided to him that “my heart has somewhat gone out of my work.” Shortly thereafter, he informed Stephens he was considering submitting his resignation, citing a series of letters from the chairman that “reflect an increasing lack of respect for my judgment and an increasing tendency to become involved in the administration and operation of the College.” This decision was confirmed following Stephens’s first visit to Anatolia in over thirty years in 1971 and his subsequent report to the Board. Chairman Stephens’s faultfinding echoed in part complaints heard from some alumni, parents, and former staff members. They reflected a perception of the College having lost aspects of its earlier idealism and the close bonds among teachers, students, and graduates. Even Carl Compton, who rarely voiced criticism, felt compelled to advise Hayden of this lament following a visit to the campus in 1970. To some degree, it undoubtedly reflected the consequences of the school having grown in size. It may also have been due in part to the manner in which the president discharged the not easily reconciled duties of educator and fundraiser. Some of the younger American teachers whose outlook reflected a generational divide and the feisty values of the 1960s tended to be critical of the emphasis the Haydens gave to public relations and of their personal style in promoting the College. After securing employment as superintendent of the Escuela Americana in San Salvador, Hayden ended his presidency in February 1972. A period of leadership that had begun and advanced most promisingly thus came to an early end.70 THE LAST YEARS OF DICTATORSHIP The Junta government had held power for half a decade through its monopoly on armed force. It drew some support, or at least tolerance, among those disillusioned with the unstable governments of preceding years. It also won a measure of appreciation for certain material improvements, especially in rural areas where many of its leaders originated and which had fallen behind the cities during the postwar economic surge. However, the regime would have had to perform brilliantly in order to overcome the popular revulsion against its repressive measures, and this it failed to do. On the contrary, the cure turned out to be worse than the malady. The

330

Chapter 9

colonels proved unable to advance beyond patriotic slogans and religious exhortations to articulate any convincing political philosophy or to fashion a workable formula for governance. More harmful still, the dictatorship revived the 1940s schism between left and right that had inflicted immense harm on Greek society but was well on its way to being consigned to the past. By reopening those old wounds and ending the longest period of constitutional government in the country’s history, the Junta tragically arrested Greece’s political and social progress. It was the urban middle classes who reacted most strongly. Accordingly, they became the principal targets of sanctions ranging from loss of employment to imprisonment in a climate of fear and suspicion. Resentment against the dictatorship mounted but could seldom be manifested in any direct way within Greece. Campaigns by Greeks residing abroad and philhellenes to enlist foreign opposition to the regime yielded stronger results in Europe than in the United States. The Council of Europe threatened Greece’s expulsion, prompting the Junta to withdraw from that body with some loss of face, and the EEC applied a few brakes to the process of Greece’s association. The United States, on the other hand, subordinated principles of democratic governance to its objective of sustaining an alliance against international communism. Given the zeal of Greece’s military rulers for that goal and the country’s strategic value, America’s political leaders found ways to excuse its detour from constitutional rule. Ignoring the NATO alliance’s declared objective of defending democratic liberties, they elected to back the regime. Manifestations of support, in addition to military assistance, included widely publicized visits by leading Americans who praised Greece’s government. The most noteworthy was that of Vice President Spiro Agnew, holder of the highest public office by any Greek American in the country’s history. It was some twenty-five years after the Junta’s fall that a visiting U.S. president, William Clinton, publicly acknowledged America’s earlier failure to uphold democratic principles by its support of the dictatorship.71 Popular dissent became more widespread as the Junta’s rule began to unravel in its final years. For reasons previously indicated, it took on anti-American aspects from which Anatolia, despite its noninvolvement in politics, was not entirely immune. An institution having a Greek student body and faculty but with American senior administrators and trustees could not entirely escape Greece’s deepening political discord. The circumstances under which the school’s new administration assumed responsibilities in early 1972 were therefore especially challenging. Upon Hayden’s resignation, the trustees called Joseph S. Kennedy to Boston for consultations and designated him acting president. Kennedy



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

331

had brought teaching and administrative experience from secondary schools in Texas, Alaska, and California when succeeding Musgrove as vice president a year and a half earlier. It was noteworthy that at their meeting convened to appoint Kennedy on an interim basis, the trustees resolved that fundraising skills should not be a primary criterion, but rather abilities as an educator and administrator. This reversal of the Board’s declared priorities when appointing Hayden eight years earlier presumably reflected a reconsideration of priorities and preferred leadership style, given the circumstances of Hayden’s departure as well as Kennedy’s inexperience in fundraising. Hayden’s decision to end his assignment at Anatolia triggered regret among several trustees who held his work in high regard. Concern was expressed at the May 1972 Board meeting that the Executive Committee might have exceeded its authority and neglected to consult with other trustees or keep them adequately informed. While renewing the appointment of Everett Stephens as chairman, the Board later that year revised its bylaws to strengthen the role of the president, who was now designated a full member of the Board. By a separate action, the Boston-based director for fundraising was assigned to report directly to the president rather than to the chairman as before. At the same May meeting, Joseph Kennedy was unanimously confirmed as Anatolia’s eighth president. The trustees’ decision was influenced by letters from Thessaloniki praising his abilities, including one signed by over fifty College staff members, but also by the endorsement of trustee Doris R. Riggs who had made a special trip to Anatolia that April to assess the situation upon Hayden’s resignation. Following meetings with faculty and administrators, she relayed her confidence that Kennedy “is a man of wisdom and caliber that we need at the head of this College.” At the same time, she stressed the importance of the president having full authority and support by the Board.72 The new president’s first task was to assemble an administrative team following the several departures noted above. Miles Lovelace, who joined Anatolia’s staff as director of Special Services the previous September and was later designated acting vice president, left after only one year to assume direction of the Stravenger International School in Norway. His replacement as vice president, Gail Schoppert, proved to be a stalwart educator who contributed to coping with the challenges of the next several years. Similarly, upon the departure of Bob McKeen as business manager after only a year (1971–1972), a most satisfactory solution was found by the promotion of Byron Alexiades ’53 from finance officer to that key post.73 Equally important were new appointments to the two Greek director (gymnasiarchis) positions. Margarita Falari, a physics teacher who had

332

Chapter 9

begun her career at Koraïs School, now assumed responsibility for the Girls School, which she discharged with loyalty and competence for nineteen years. Determining who should administer the Boys School proved more complex due in part to the circumstances of Georgopapadakos’s removal from that post four years earlier. There was concern among Anatolia teachers that anyone approved by the authorities would be viewed as a favorite of the ruling regime and thus labeled a “juntist.” Only three members of the boys faculty had sufficient years of service to qualify under current law, all of whom declined. A compromise of sorts was reached, with the three teachers endorsing the appointment of their junior colleague, Ioannis Paparallis. There was little prospect of Paparallis being stigmatized as a juntist since he had been held for alleged political dissent years before on the infamous prison island of Makronisos. As to how the authorities could be expected to allow such an appointment, it seems their concerns had turned elsewhere, as evidenced also by the previous approval of Constantine Botsakis as director. It was after the latter’s fatal illness in September 1971 that Hayden’s nomination of Paparallis was approved provisionally by the Ministry and confirmed in early 1972. His task of sustaining harmony in the Boys School amid political currents and personal rivalries was by no means an easy one.74 The new administrative team labored diligently to perpetuate Anatolia’s traditional values while coping with many challenges. Emphasis continued to be given to academic excellence, cultural enrichment through extracurricular activities, and athletic competition. New efforts were made to find scholarships for Greek faculty to pursue summer study at American universities. Language and literature teacher Eleni Sgourou, physics teacher Agni Papademetriou, home economics specialist Ninetta Godhi, and mathematicians Aristides Kyriakakis and Anastasios Agapis took advantage of such opportunities.75 In other respects this proved to be a difficult time for Anatolia, as for many organizations during the last uneasy years of Junta rule. An edgy restlessness weighed upon faculty sensibilities and affected student behavior. A new school newspaper, The Student World, was conspicuous for its contentious style, as was the student council on occasion. A rising antiAmerican climate in society at large could not help but be felt to some degree within the school, although some American teachers expressed their contempt for the dictatorship more openly than their Greek colleagues, given that they stood less chance of suffering consequences. It became a challenge to all Anatolia’s personnel to sustain a spirit of optimism and impart courage and inspiration to students. The preoccupation of families with improving their children’s prospects for succeeding in the highly competitive university entrance exams



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

333

bore consequences for Anatolia’s educational practices, as previously noted. Parents now petitioned the school to allow senior students to depart earlier in the day, as at public schools, so as to enroll in cram schools or undertake private instruction. This could only be done at the expense of subjects not included in the university exams but considered important by the College, including English language, or by reducing the school’s extracurricular activities. Certain faculty members endorsed the parents’ demands, with a view to enhancing their own free time and availability to offer private lessons. Kennedy relayed to the trustees that “the frontisterion is bigger than all of us at this time in Greek education.” Despite heavy pressure, the administration rejected the parents’ petition. The perennial issue of being able to provide a curriculum including sufficient hours of English instruction as well as certain subjects taught in English became more acute. How could Anatolia take pride in its offerings, or even justify its existence, if it were obliged to conform entirely to the public school profile? The mandated procedure of reapplying annually for Ministry of Education permission to vary the College’s program in even minor ways seemed to encounter greater obstacles every year. The Ministry in 1973 even denied the usual permission for Anatolia to begin fall classes on Sept. 20, ten days in advance of the public schools and also ordered it to reinstate a student whom the school had dismissed for failure in English language. It was at this time also that the Ministry rejected Anatolia’s application to found an elementary school.76 Serious financial clouds loomed on the horizon in 1973 when the government ordered a reduction in private school tuition while decreeing sharp increases in teachers’ and workers’ salaries. The College projected a severe deficit should those measures be applied. The Executive Committee of the trustees thereupon resolved that, should the announced measures prove harmful to the quality of education offered by Anatolia, the Board would seriously consider closing the College. Fortunately, the tuition limits were lifted and another crisis was avoided, although inflation had again become rampant.77 Probably the most serious concern of Anatolia’s administration was its perception that a very few senior teachers in the Boys School had for some time connived to undermine its authority while enhancing their personal income, mostly through private lessons. Doris Riggs had alerted the trustees to this problem following her 1972 visit to assess circumstances upon Hayden’s departure. It was emphasized as well in the new president’s correspondence to the trustees, despite his quite good relations with the majority of the school staff. To cite one example, Kennedy wrote to Chairman Stephens in 1973: “A few days ago at Administrative Council meeting, I tried to get at the root of this entire problem and received the statement from the Deans that ‘this group is killing the school.’ When I

334

Chapter 9

asked what their reason was, they tended to confirm the statement made verbally to me by Mrs. Riggs that anyone who gained control of the College has gotten himself a ‘financial plum.’ The torture of Mr. Paparallis as the Dean continues. I feel that I can no longer sit back and watch this go on.” Stephens also addressed this issue in a meeting with representatives of the Greek faculty. 78 A closely related concern was that the Inspector of Foreign Schools had come to exercise an increasingly heavy hand. An opportunity arose for the administration to grasp just how officialdom viewed the school when Inspector Nicholas Hionidis, visiting from Athens, attended a meeting of Anatolia’s administrative council. During the discussion, the inspector noted that the president had no legal authority to dismiss any Greek faculty member. In response to Kennedy’s further query as to what authority the American administration did have under Greek law, Hionidis replied that it had none, other than through its Greek directors.79 At the time of this exchange with Inspector Hionidis, Kennedy had already submitted his resignation, making him Anatolia’s shortest serving president. His action was prompted not only by the trying circumstances cited above but also by strained relations with Chairman Stephens. Part of the latter issue, as cited by Kennedy in his February resignation letter, pertained to disharmony between Stephens and Paul Rockwell, director for fundraising in Boston, under the new arrangement whereby Rockwell reported directly to the president rather than to the chairman. Despite consultations in Boston the following month, and further efforts by Stephens and other trustees to dissuade him, Kennedy confirmed his decision, to take effect that summer.80 The departing president questioned the value of Anatolia’s mission in Greece under current conditions. His final correspondence to three members of the Executive Committee, responding to a set of questions they had posed, concluded: “I really have little to say concerning the approach that should be used by the new president. He is literally hamstrung by Greek law and particularly the tenure system that exists here for Greek teachers.” He added, however, that the majority of its Greek teachers were dedicated to Anatolia’s purposes and did their best for the school, although there was a group that was anti-American. His most emphatic recommendation was that Everett Stephens be replaced as Board chairman.81 The circumstances under which American educators undertook foreign employment had shifted over the years. Before World War II, Anatolia and a few kindred schools drew their non-Greek personnel largely from missionary circles and associated colleges. In the 1950s and 1960s, they came to rely upon the Fulbright Foundation to provide teachers. But by the 1970s, a new dimension had emerged in international education. As



Through Prosperity and Dictatorship (1958–1974)

335

the United States, having abandoned its prewar policy of isolation, engaged much of the world at the same time as improvements in transportation made foreign travel easier, Americans and allied peoples formed new commercial, professional, and military communities in many countries. Among the first requirements of these enclaves was English-language education for their children, resulting in the proliferation of international schools. Most such schools were designed to provide a bridge enabling students to resume studies in the United States after a few years abroad. With permission from local governments, they normally operated outside the particular country’s educational system; often only foreign citizens were allowed to enroll. The International Schools Foundation listed 170 schools attended by American students in the 1960s. In Greece, there were at least two such American-sponsored schools. One of them, Pinewood, as we have seen, shared a portion of the Anatolia campus to accommodate its international student body. The typical international school catering largely to an American clientele normally adopted a curriculum and administrative structure similar to private, nonprofit, nonsectarian schools in the United States. A governing board appointed a headmaster with broad administrative powers. Lines of authority were well defined. Such schools tended to be so similar in their programs and management that personnel moved easily from one to another. As a result, an international educators’ circuit developed as young Americans with college degrees sought experience abroad. Not a few were veterans of the U.S. Peace Corps with an appetite for further overseas employment. Anatolia, despite being deeply embedded in the Greek educational system, increasingly came to recruit qualified American personnel from the widening range of international schools.82 Such institutions also offered employment opportunities for Anatolia’s departing American staff. Bob Hayden had secured a post as superintendent in just such a school in El Salvador, as had Miles Lovelace in Norway. Similarly, Joe Kennedy now accepted the offer to become principal of the Cairo American College. It is doubtful that any of those schools could begin to match Anatolia’s rich traditions or its impressive campus. But they did offer one compelling attraction for administrators: clearly defined authority together with manageable responsibilities. One of the more uplifting events during the last months of Junta rule was the June 1974 commencement exercises, especially the address by the class valedictorian, Aristides Papadopoulos. He extolled the College’s efforts to transmit high ideals despite rigid state constraints, concluding with a call to his classmates to honor the ideals of democracy and to never dissolve the bonds that tied them together and to Anatolia.83

336

Chapter 9

Greece’s political life endured new turbulence from the winter of 1973–1974 until the fall of the Junta the following summer. An attack by security forces on protestors at the leading engineering university in Athens, resulting in scores of casualties and thousands of arrests, intensified popular outrage against the dictatorship and triggered changes in its leadership. November 17, “Polytechnic Day,” later came to be observed as a national holiday. The political drama reached its climax with the Junta’s attempt to overthrow the government of Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus, the island’s invasion by Turkish military forces in response, the collapse of Greece’s dictatorship, and the return to democratic rule under Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis.84 As the prospect of war with Turkey loomed in July 1974, every corner of Greece experienced the drama of mobilization. At Anatolia, not only were eligible male staff members called to military duty but army units also occupied the campus for three days to assemble recruits. At the same time, officials from Army Hospital No. 424 arrived to undertake the school’s conversion to a medical facility, as had happened in 1940 and was envisioned under the military’s emergency plans. Early resolution of the political crisis fortunately rendered such measures unnecessary. With most of the senior staff on summer vacation, Business Manager Byron Alexiades ably handled these brief but challenging incidents. The ensuing restoration of democracy brought new hope and prospects to Greece and its people, all fully shared by Anatolia College.85

10

} Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

A

THE POST-JUNTA YEARS

s our plane approached Greece on July 20, 1974, the pilot suddenly announced a change in destination. Turkish troops had invaded Cyprus, Athens airport was closed to civilian traffic, and our flight was being diverted to Rome. At their meeting in Boston just a few days earlier, the trustees had appointed me as Anatolia’s new president, and I was eager to confer with my predecessor, Joe Kennedy, before he departed for his new post in Cairo. It took three days to reach Thessaloniki from Italy via train, boat, and bus. The first person to greet me on the Anatolia campus was Anastasios Agapis ’57, teacher of mathematics, impressive in his military officer’s uniform. He was one of several staff members called to service during the as yet unresolved crisis. The trustees, faced with Joseph Kennedy’s unexpected resignation and his discouraging assessment of the school’s prospects, revised for the third successive time their criteria for selecting a chief executive. The Presidential Search Committee, headed by Dr. Elias Gyftopoulos, explained to the Board: “The committee feels strongly that under the present conditions in Greece and the College, understanding the Greek cultural, social and political environment is sine qua non for the new president. Primarily for this reason, and after a soul-searching discussion, we reached the unanimous decision to recommend Mr. McGrew. Out of a long list of applicants and interviewees, he was the only candidate that satisfied the overriding requirement.”1 337

338

Chapter 10

It was thus my good fortune to be entrusted with the management of one of Greece’s finest schools largely by virtue of some familiarity with the country and its culture. This Hellenic experience had been acquired through service as a U.S. consular officer in Athens, Thessaloniki, and Cyprus. After a decade with the State Department, encompassing many rich experiences including Greek-language training, personal and professional considerations prompted a career change; serving as a representative of U.S. foreign policy during the Vietnam War had become increasingly disagreeable. Following another two years in Greece as regional manager for a U.S. private company, I began graduate studies at the University of Cincinnati and was just completing doctoral research in Athens when the opportunity arose to assume Anatolia’s leadership.2 Anatolia had become well known to me when I was serving at the U.S. Consulate General in Thessaloniki (1962–1964) and was invited to speak at the school, attended its Thanksgiving dinners and Field Day exercises, and played basketball with alumni on their court on Sophouli Street. I had also stayed in touch with President Bob Hayden, who in 1970 invited me to assume an administrative post at the college, but I elected instead to complete my doctoral degree with specialization in Greek history. However, in the spring of 1974, George Michalopoulos, my former language tutor in Thessaloniki who had taught at Anatolia, informed me of the College’s search for a president and urged me to apply. Greece in the mid-1970s projected immense appeal by virtue of its unmatched natural beauty and its popular culture that had recently made it a favorite tourist destination. The country’s rich heritage drew scholars, artists, and many other admirers. Beyond those well-known attributes, the country exercised a magnetism by virtue of the special appeal of its people. They exhibited a restless intelligence, keen imagination, ready sense of humor, and basic kindness that were irresistible to the foreign visitor. Greek hospitality has remained legendary. As regards education, these same qualities were of high importance, while reinforced by still others. Greeks displayed exceptional eagerness for learning. In part, this reflected the cultural tradition, of which they were justly proud, as well as practical recognition that educational success led to professional advancement. Beyond these basic considerations, however, there was a natural curiosity and esteem for knowledge that crossed social and economic lines. Teachers commanded high respect and students generally took their studies very seriously. Their parents displayed exceptional gratitude for high quality instruction. These circumstances had great attraction. If the strongest qualities of Greek culture and tradition could be merged with the best features of American education, particularly the latter’s emphasis on the sciences, practical applications of knowledge, English language and literature, and



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

339

wide-ranging extracurricular experiences, the result should be true excellence. Anatolia clearly possessed the prerequisites for a model school, provided certain conditions could be met. These included close cooperation between the College’s Greek and American educators, alignment of their respective academic strengths, and devotion by all personnel to the highest welfare of their students. The task of the College’s administration would be to ensure that those requirements were fulfilled. This was the challenge I welcomed when accepting appointment as Anatolia’s ninth president. To be sure, there were other factors that made that challenge a daunting one. My background included no professional experience in secondary education, school administration, or fundraising. These were significant disadvantages for any president, as Howard Johnston had discovered to his dismay sixteen years earlier. However, circumstances at Anatolia were now quite different, as the trustees clearly perceived when making their decision. Whereas Johnston had stepped into an administrative void, with neither a senior American educator nor a business manager on the staff, the College now enjoyed substantial strength in both areas. Under normal circumstances, Vice President Gail Schoppert would probably have been the Board’s choice for president. His service to Anatolia had been outstanding during the previous two years. Gail combined solid experience in secondary education with leadership qualities and a rich personal culture that he shared generously with students and colleagues. His personality radiated through the College, from its classrooms and auditoriums to the playing fields and theater, solidly backed by his wife, Ruth. Over the next four years, Schoppert skillfully guided much of the operation while tactfully assisting the novice president to grasp the fundamentals of school administration. The post of business manager had been stabilized two years earlier with the appointment of Byron Alexiades ’53. For twenty-five years he administered the school’s finances and oversaw the ongoing improvement of the campus with remarkable loyalty and competence. The Girls School continued under the wise direction of Margarita Falari, one of Anatolia’s finest educators. The Boys School, on the other hand, encountered new difficulties, as will be related. The administration received a boost at this time by the arrival of Kenneth J. Wrye as director of Student Services. With experience as headmaster of a private school in Kabul, Afghanistan, this young educator was to play an important role over the next four years in organizing student activities.3 It was with the benefit of these substantial assets that I began service at Anatolia with eagerness and optimism. Meanwhile, however, political clouds loomed ominously. The Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974, inflicting suffering and dislocation on that island’s population, reverberated throughout Greece as an intolerable humiliation of a kindred people.

340

Chapter 10

It was widely felt as a betrayal by Greece’s friend and ally, the United States, who failed to intervene forcefully. The Karamanlis government signaled its refusal to accept the status quo in Cyprus by withdrawing from the military command of the NATO alliance. These events clouded the relationship between Greece and the United States, with repercussions felt by all parties involved in cooperation between the two countries. Even a privately sponsored American school could not escape entirely the widespread disappointment with Greece’s powerful patron. Anatolia would have to work harder than ever to demonstrate that its sole goal was to deliver the best possible education to Greek youth. Classes began that fall with enrollment at the anticipated level.4 ANATOLIA’S CYPRIOT SCHOLARS Though preoccupied with preparing for the new school year under trying circumstances, Anatolia could not ignore the Cyprus crisis and the plight of that island’s Greek population. We resolved to offer boarding scholarships to as many displaced Cypriot children as could be accommodated in the school’s dormitories. However, finding qualified youngsters among the crowds of refugees who had only recently fled to southern Cyprus from the Turkish-occupied north proved to be no small task, as was obtaining parental consent and arranging transportation to Greece. Fortunately, contacts at the Fulbright Commission in Nicosia, on which I had served while in Cyprus, readily provided assistance. In cooperation with the Cypriot Ministry of Education, they promptly selected and arranged transportation for twenty-six homeless teenagers. Anatolia’s new Cypriot students reached Piraeus’s harbor on October 9 at 5:30 a.m. after a two-day voyage from the port of Limassol. Senior class representatives Eleni Georgopoulou and Costas Gounis accompanied me overnight by bus to meet them; we were joined at the dock by several Anatolia alumni. Upon our return to campus late that afternoon, the new students were embraced by teachers and students, and guided to the dormitories for their first good rest in several days. The following morning, the young Cypriots were introduced to the entire student body and faculty assembled in front of Macedonia Hall. As the Greek deans called their names, each one mounted the stairs to the continuous ovation by all those assembled. Following the welcome by a senior student, Constantinos Gogakis responded that he and his fellow Cypriots had not come to Greece as if to a foreign country, but had always considered it their homeland. There were few dry eyes among the crowd. That same evening, viewers throughout Greece witnessed the Cypriots’ arrival at Anatolia on national television.



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

341

Anatolia’s new scholars, ten girls and sixteen boys, had been well chosen. Although they came from separate villages without prior acquaintance, they bonded quickly. Their backgrounds largely corresponded socially and economically to those of Anatolia’s other scholarship students, thereby assisting their adjustment. Since it had not been possible to administer tests during the rushed selection process, some problems arose in their academic adjustment, particularly as regarded English language. Special lessons were devised to remedy such deficiencies, with Anatolia teachers volunteering their services.5 The urgency of this effort had allowed no prior measures to finance twenty-six new scholarships. However, the Anatolia community responded immediately to the challenge. Faculty and staff took up a special collection. Stavros Constantinides ’47, a Thessaloniki textile entrepreneur and for many years our most generous alumnus, immediately volunteered to fund ten full scholarships. Alumni and parents offered gifts of money, clothing, and medical care while also providing hospitality during weekends and vacations. In the United States, Eugene T. Rossides, a trustee of Cypriot descent, assumed leadership of a new Cypriot scholarship campaign.6 For some of the younger Cypriots, Anatolia served as a temporary haven until their families could establish residences in the Greek-controlled area of Cyprus, upon which they hastened to rejoin them. Three older girls remained to graduate, as well as twelve of the sixteen boys. The latter were obliged by Cypriot law to return for military service, after which most of them went on to higher education. Constantine Gogakis ’77, the group’s spokesman at the welcoming ceremony, studied aviation in the United States before becoming a pilot with Cyprus Airways. Panayiotis Antoniou ’78 earned Greek university degrees and joined Anatolia’s teaching staff for twenty-seven years, becoming assistant lyceum director and dormitory superintendent before returning to Cyprus to assume political responsibilities. Antonis Antoniou ’76 won a full scholarship to Princeton University and later entered the financial field where he assisted Anatolia in securing a major foundation grant and was appointed to its Board of Trustees. The College remains exceedingly proud of the record compiled by its Cypriot students.7 SENIOR STUDENTS DISCOVER MT. OLYMPUS Mountain Day was a tradition at Anatolia, originating in Merzifon, where the ascent of Ak Dagh (White Mountain) had been an annual event. It continued in Thessaloniki, though in recent years it seemed to have become more a leisurely stroll than a rigorous hike. Just across the bay,

342

Chapter 10

majestic Mt. Olympus beckons in all its beauty. Why not give Anatolians the opportunity to ascend the world’s most famous mountain, practically on their doorstep but rarely visited? Having hiked to its summit with my own children, it seemed to be within the capacity of most fit teenagers. No climbing equipment or training was needed. It soon became clear, however, that such an endeavor was not consistent with the current faculty’s concept of appropriate activities. In fact, it seemed that no Greek school undertook such ventures. An incident some years earlier when teachers elsewhere in Greece were held responsible for a student drowning during a school excursion was often cited as a reason to eschew all possible hazards. An Olympus climb would have to be organized outside the faculty’s jurisdiction. A solution was found by scheduling the trip on a weekend, making student participation optional, and requiring parental approval. Several teachers and alumni volunteered to join as escorts and guides. The first Mt. Olympus ascent took place in the fall of 1975 with about forty older boys. Their enthusiastic response led to more participants the following year, including girls, making it necessary to limit the overnight outing to senior students so as not to exceed the capacity of the mountain lodge. As participation continued to grow, two climbs were organized on successive weekends to make the experience available to all seniors who so desired. Anatolia’s Alumni Association assisted by assuming official sponsorship. Following a two-hour bus ride, the first day’s ascent followed a wellworn trail through pine forests to the lodge situated near the tree line. This ample facility was operated by Costas Zolotas, a trained Alpinist, and his Austrian wife, who over the years made Olympus accessible to thousands of visitors. One of the more memorable features of the weekend took place after Saturday dinner as students and escorts relaxed in front of the fireplace for an evening of songs and humorous recitations. Distinguished for their guitar playing were teachers Rodney Coules and Stergios Stamoulas. The approach to the 2,918-meter summit began early Sunday morning. The first hour and a half was mostly a steep but even walk along a wellmarked route. At a high point named Kaki Skala (Evil Ladder), teams were formed, each led by an experienced Anatolia guide, for the final ascent to the peak of Mytikas. This proved to be the most intimidating phase of the climb because of the many nearby cliffs and crevices, though the path itself was safe. Teenagers confronting so dramatic a landscape for the first time were compelled to summon courage and determination in order to reach the top. The rules of the excursion allowed participants to turn back at any time, as some did, though personal pride or peer pressure motivated most of them to overcome fears and persevere. Early



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

343

snowfalls or strong winds occasionally terminated the ascent short of the summit; student safety was always the primary concern. On clear days, the view from Mytikas, the highest point in Greece, encompasses the peaks of Mt. Athos to the east, Mt. Ossa and Mt. Pelion to the south, and the Pindos Mountains westward. The narrow and exposed summit discouraged lingering beyond the requisite cheers and photographs. Besides, a long trail awaited the successful hikers back to the lodge for a late lunch and then onward to the departing buses. They arrived in Thessaloniki Sunday night, exhausted but proud, mindful that one of the conditions for receiving the gold medal for reaching Mitikas was to be present at the 8:00 a.m. school assembly the following morning. As Anatolia’s Olympus excursion became better known, a number of trustees joined the hike, as well as U.S. Ambassador to Greece Thomas Niles. Over a period of twenty-four years, nearly one thousand Anatolia seniors received the Olympus medal. More significant than the award was the satisfaction of having summoned the mettle to reach their goal. Not a single student experienced any mishap or injury on the Olympus climb, though aching muscles often lingered as reminders of the achievement. As with most extracurricular activities, the value of the senior climb for individual development could not be measured with any precision. Presumably, it contributed to building personal courage and physical stamina while allowing participants to experience the extraordinary mountain with its rich legacy and natural beauty. But in one instance, at least, the Olympus experience seems to have exerted greater influence. Michael Styllas ’92 came from an exceptionally athletic family in Thessaloniki and had climbed Olympus even before joining the Anatolia excursion. While continuing his studies at the University of Thessaloniki, Michael volunteered as a guide for Anatolia’s senior class climbs. Following postgraduate studies in Oregon, where he participated in a variety of “extreme sports,” he returned to become a member of the first Greek national team to successfully scale Mt. Everest in 2004. Indeed, this alumnus may be the only individual to have reached the summits of the world’s two most famous mountains. Today he manages a hiking lodge on Mt. Olympus.8 POST-JUNTA POLITICS ENGULF THE COLLEGE Among the consequences of the Junta’s seven-year misrule was the splitting of the country once more into antagonistic political factions. The Colonels’ abuse of power had engendered suspicion of all forms of authority. The restoration of democracy was followed by a minor version of a cultural revolution, manifesting pent-up hostility toward the dictatorship but influenced also by social protest movements in Western Europe,

344

Chapter 10

particularly France, where many anti-juntists had taken refuge. The basic premises of Greece’s governing structure and foreign relations came under challenge. Many of the younger generation—including, notably, university students and faculty—embraced radical ideologies commonly featuring an anti-American dimension. Private education was viewed by many as an unfortunate expedient at best, to be tolerated only until the state could provide free education for all. One manifestation of this unrest was widespread strikes which, banned under the Junta, were now widely seen as expressions of democratic conviction. Private school teachers of leftist persuasion formed a nationwide union, with three Anatolia teachers elected to the executive committee of its Thessaloniki branch. In March 1976 the union launched a general strike intended to secure for its members legal tenure and other perquisites enjoyed by their public school counterparts. The union’s demands could be met only through legislation, to which the government remained firmly opposed. Anatolia already provided tenure for its teachers after a threeyear trial period under the school’s long-standing Career Membership. In addition, they received a second pension from an American-based fund and their children studied at Anatolia tuition free. Nevertheless, responding to the spirit of the times, the faculty joined the strike out of sympathy for “comrades” at other private schools. No action by Anatolia could satisfy the strikers’ demands or return its teachers to their classrooms. As the strike entered its second week, parent dissatisfaction mounted, particularly since the public schools continued to operate while final exams drew nearer. In response to insistent requests, Anatolia’s administration called a meeting that was attended by over two hundred troubled parents who expressed sharp rejection of the strikers’ argument that their action served noble educational or social purposes, despite whatever ills it might cause their students. The meeting delivered a rebuke to the teachers, who until then had been widely backed by the media and popular post-Junta sentiment. By the end of its second week, the strike collapsed nationwide. One of Anatolia’s senior teachers, only half jokingly, referred to the parents’ meeting as the “St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.” It brought a sharper awareness to many Anatolia teachers of their responsibilities toward their students, as opposed to currently fashionable political concepts.9 The following year saw yet another strike that closed both private and public schools. After the first week without classes, I called our teachers to a meeting where they were reminded that by placing loyalties to the union above those owed their school and their students, they put at risk their many benefits, including tenure. Anatolia’s teachers began to return, thus permitting a partial resumption of classes. As others came to join their colleagues, the full school program soon resumed and the strike



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

345

ceased at the few private schools in Thessaloniki, though not in Athens. Strikes continued to be common occurrences throughout the country, but less disruptive at Anatolia. A contributing factor, surely, was the trustees’ decision, on my recommendation, that faculty tenure might be suspended under certain circumstances.10 One consequence of the teachers’ actions was the founding of a Parents Association in late 1976. It was led largely by alumni with children at Anatolia, working through the association to sustain the College’s standards. This was a time of high emotion for all concerned. Some of Anatolia’s older students, out of a sense of loyalty to their striking teachers, resisted the order to return to classes. Among the unforgettable scenes from those turbulent days was the reaction by an alumna, also a member of the new parents’ council, upon observing some senior girls refusing to enter classes. In tears she exclaimed, “How can this be happening at my school?” Anatolia’s Greek faculty faced conflicting principles and loyalties, especially the younger teachers confronting new politically tinged issues for the first time. Even the deans faced dilemmas, as director of the boys gymnasium Michaelis Nikolaou explained to visiting trustees. They were obliged to serve two masters, the school’s president and the Inspector of Foreign Schools. The latter performed evaluations of Greek teaching staff and issued ratings that determined their professional advancement. There were lessons to be learned on all sides from these bracing events. It is noteworthy that, throughout these troubled years, the Anatolia administrative and maintenance staffs remained steadfastly devoted to the college. They conducted negotiations periodically with the school administration to resolve questions of remuneration and benefits during a time of high inflation and economic uncertainty.11 The limitations on the administration’s authority that had troubled previous presidents soon became manifest. Upon the Junta’s collapse in the summer of 1974, one of the three senior teachers who had earlier waived any claim to the position of Boys School director and had supported in writing the assignment of Ioannis Paparallis (see chapter 9), now formally denounced that appointment to the Education Ministry. The Ministry, on the defensive about decisions taken during the Junta years, now reversed its earlier approval, ordering that an educator of full director rank be appointed. After delaying compliance as long as possible, I nominated Theodore Mavropoulos for the director’s post. Paparallis, a dedicated educator as well as gifted artist and poet, resumed full-time teaching duties.12 The subsequent test of the administration’s authority followed new legislation in 1976. Essentially restoring the Papanoutsos reforms of 1964 that the Junta had reversed, its most significant provisions reinstated demotic Greek as the main language of instruction and divided the sixyear gymnasium into two schools: a three-year gymnasium followed by

346

Chapter 10

a three-year lyceum. For Anatolia, with separate boys and girls divisions, this meant a total of four schools rather than two, with four Greek deans. Once again, the Girls School posed no problem: Margarita Falari undertook the direction of its lyceum, while an able Anatolia Greek-language teacher, Eleni Sgourou, headed its gymnasium. In the Boys School, on the other hand, none of the three legally eligible faculty members was suited, in my estimation, to assume responsibility as lyceum director at that time. Fortunately, one of the most experienced secondary educators in Thessaloniki was willing to assume those duties. George Michalopoulos, having arrived as a young refugee from Turkey, after many years of teaching and administration in the public schools of northern Greece, held a higher professional rank than any of the current Anatolia faculty. He had served as director of Thessaloniki’s prestigious Experimental School until discharged by the Junta for his progressive views. Michalopoulos knew Anatolia well, having taught there on three occasions. Moreover, when giving Greek lessons to American personnel at the U.S. Consulate General some years earlier, he had become my tutor and friend. However, his nomination as lyceum director now met opposition from the Inspector of Foreign Schools, who insisted that Anatolia’s previous gymnasium dean must assume that new post. This ruling threatened one of the president’s few remaining prerogatives—namely, the right to decide who should be designated school director from among legally qualified faculty. It was at this point that a former student performed a noble service for his school. Although Thomas Alexiou’s studies were interrupted by World War II, he remained attached to Anatolia while serving as a member of Parliament for the Xanthi district. Alexiou arranged for me to meet in Athens with the influential educational leader, Evangelos Papanoutsos, then senior adviser to the new government. Papanoutsos verified that the appointment of director at a licensed private school could be made only following the proposal by its proprietor. An order to that effect from the Ministry followed shortly, with George Michalopoulos confirmed as lyceum dean. Anatolia thereby gained an outstanding educator while its administration was spared a serious setback.13 The division of the student body into four rather than two separate schools as provided under the new law had positive consequences, as I was able to report to the trustees in the fall of 1976: We foresaw the beneficial potential of this provision, and have been careful to make the division a real one, and as complete as possible. The result is four schools, four separate student bodies, four separate faculties, four separate morning assemblies, etc. Each school has about 275 students, their ages ranging over only three years rather than six as before. Control is easier. Relations



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

347

are more personal among students and between students and teachers. The deans are less burdened than before, having only half as many students to oversee. However, more of a burden is created for the administration because more coordination is required, but this also gives the administration a somewhat closer and stronger hold over the deans and their work. Finally, the smaller faculties have conducted their meetings with greater dispatch and less ill-directed passion than previously.14

Stricter enforcement of the College’s rules, particularly those restricting outside employment at frontistiria (cram schools), now led to the resignation of two teachers. Many applications were received to replace them. Two others were discharged for inadequate performance, one of whom was an officer in the private teachers’ union. An ensuing court challenge drew wide attention, including protests against the latter’s dismissal by the Thessaloniki Municipal Council, the local press, and even the Engineers and Electricians Union. However, the court upheld the College’s action. An invaluable resource throughout these years was Anatolia’s newly appointed legal adviser, Vasilis “Lakis” Papademas ’57. In a society with a predilection for litigation, this reliable attorney defended the College’s interests on numerous occasions. His notable assets included mastery of the complex body of laws governing private education and the status of foreign schools. Confronting a range of often contentious issues, this devoted alumnus proved to be a tower of strength. Other key figures were lyceum deans Margaret Falari and George Michalopoulos. The latter, limited by age to a single year’s service, was succeeded in the fall of 1978 by Anatolia mathematics teacher Aristides Kyriakakis. Long a charismatic figure in secondary education in northern Greece, Michalopoulos received a steady stream of former students at his Thessaloniki home.15 An incident occurring at this time illustrated the exceptional sensitivity of elements of the Greek public to the activities of American-sponsored institutions. Anatolia was the first school in Greece to participate in the Model United Nations (MUN), an international forum where student delegations were invited to represent nations other than their own. The purely educational objective was to foster an understanding of international relations. Delegates were encouraged to master the UN’s principles and procedures, research the foreign policy of the country they represented, formulate team strategies, and debate in English a variety of issues in simulated UN sessions. Awards were given by a panel of judges to the best performers. Participants interacted with teenagers from other countries at organized social events. Elated by its initial experience, hosted by the American School of The Hague in 1978, Anatolia returned the following year with two delegations, one of which was assigned to represent Cyprus. It so happened

348

Chapter 10

that the American-sponsored Pierce College in Athens, participating for the first time, was asked to represent Bangladesh. The ensuing dynamics were fully in accord with the rules of Model UN role-playing. During negotiations among the several teams, the delegation representing Turkey solicited supportive votes from the other Muslim country delegations, including that of Bangladesh, for a resolution advancing Turkish objectives in Cyprus. The Pierce College team complied appropriately, if reluctantly, with the request. Anatolia’s Cyprus delegation, in the fortunate position of representing Greece’s close ally, succeeded in winning sufficient votes to thwart the Turkish initiative. Both the Pierce and Anatolia contingents had played their roles competently and were pleased with the outcome. Until, that is, they returned to Greece. When it became known in Athens that Greek students coached by American teachers had supported pro-Turkish positions at a conference hosted by an American school, the reaction exceeded all expectations. Surrounded by a media storm, the controversy reached the Greek Parliament where the Ministry of Education was directed to undertake an investigation. As a consequence, several American teachers left Pierce College. At Anatolia, which by simple good fortune had found itself on the “right” side, the Inspector of Foreign Schools came to take formal depositions from teacher and student participants and issued a mild reprimand to one American teacher. Anatolia continued to participate in MUN for another three years, until political considerations obliged it to suspend this worthy educational exercise until the following decade.16 Not all the unsettling events of this period were political in character. In June 1978 an earthquake with its epicenter near Thessaloniki took a reported thirty-seven lives in the city and caused extensive damage. Residents fled the downtown area as aftershocks continued for weeks. Anatolia welcomed evacuees to camp on its grounds while providing meals for scores of families, making the campus a summer tent settlement until they were able to return to their homes. Macedonia and White Halls were damaged by the quake and required costly repairs but were ready to receive students that fall. Many public schools suffered such severe damage as to prevent their reopening in September. Anatolia provided classrooms for late afternoon and evening use by three such schools for several months without charge. The Minister of Northern Greece thanked the College on public television.17 Among the happier occasions was the visit in 1976 by the governor of Massachusetts and later U.S. presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis, with his wife, Kitty. The Greek American leader’s first trip to his ancestral land marked the beginning of a long relationship with Anatolia. Yet another boost to the school was the visit by Archbishop Iakovos, the promi-



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

349

nent leader of Greek Orthodoxy in America and an honorary Anatolia trustee, joined by members of his church council.18 STRENGTHENING COLLEGE GOVERNANCE Anatolia’s system of governance was unavoidably complex. On the one hand, as an American nonprofit corporation, the school abided by U.S. law governing that esteemed model for private institutions. Legal responsibility resided with the Board of Trustees, consisting of selected volunteers who performed their duties without remuneration. The trustees set the institution’s goals and appointed a president with the authority to pursue them. In Greece, on the other hand, Anatolia was subject to statutes governing the operation of foreign institutions as well as to the country’s educational laws, which tended to treat private education as an anomaly. Both of those conditions had undergone change during Anatolia’s years in Greece, narrowing the permissible margin between Greek and foreign schools as regards academic programs and administration. The Ministry of Education recognized Anatolia’s American president only as the representative of its foreign proprietor; neither he nor any other foreign appointee, including the vice president, was authorized to exercise academic authority assigned exclusively to the Greek directors. It was only to be expected that a sovereign nation would insist upon regulating foreign institutions. Moreover, despite its sensitivity to external intervention given the country’s history, the Greek state was more accommodating to foreign schools than were many countries. Hence, Anatolia’s administration was obliged to meet the expectations of the trustees while operating within the narrow confines of Greek law. It was often difficult for the trustees, given their distance and, in most cases, unfamiliarity with Greek society, to fully comprehend the conditions under which the College and its administration functioned. These circumstances had engendered earlier misunderstandings between Boston and Thessaloniki, contributing to the troubled conclusions of three preceding presidencies. Measures were now taken to lessen the distance between the institution and its overseers so as to enable it to function more effectively. The first step was for the trustees to become better acquainted with the school they oversaw. Chairman Stephens, whose 1970 trip to Thessaloniki was his first in over thirty years, now set the standard by making annual visits. Following his lead, the Board resolved to hold its spring meeting on campus at least every three years, the first such occasion taking place in 1978. The result was greater familiarity with the College, its personnel, and the context in which it operated.19

350

Chapter 10

An even more significant innovation was the appointment of trustees in Greece. Over the years, Anatolia’s Board had included a few members of Greek origin resident in the United States. They helped convey the Hellenic cultural dimension to their American colleagues, though physically distant from ongoing developments at the school. The Board now acted to narrow the gap between Boston and Thessaloniki by making the president an ex officio member of its nominating committee and welcoming his proposals for appointment of a few carefully selected individuals in Greece, mostly alumni. The first (1975) was Stavros Constantinides ’47 who had manifested devotion to the school through financial contributions and whose engineering background enabled him to offer expert counsel concerning campus works. There followed (1976) Stavros Kalogiannis ’36, an Athenian lawyer who aided the College for many years through his sage advice and intervention with government offices in the capitol. Dimitris Zannas ’38, one of Thessaloniki’s most respected attorneys, who had served as mayor upon the fall of the Junta, joined the Board the following year.20 Alki Kyriakidou-Nestor, top graduate in Anatolia’s 1953 class and professor of anthropology at the University of Thessaloniki, had been expelled from her position by the Junta, whereas her husband, Stelios, had been infamously imprisoned. It was of no small significance that this eminent member of the academic community agreed to join Anatolia’s Board in 1983, at a time when anti-American sentiment caused many in university circles to shun the school. Theodore Couloumbis, though not an alumnus, was well acquainted with American education and its adaptations in Greece. A graduate of Athens College, he completed university studies in the United States and become a professor of political science at American University in Washington, D.C., before his appointment to the University of Thessaloniki. Angelos Billis ’47, after completing his law degree in Greece, studied international relations at George Washington University. Following his return to Thessaloniki, he became manager of the Heineken firm’s Greek operation and also presided over the Anatolia Parents Association before joining the Board in 1989. Peter Apostolides ’54 served as president of both the Alumni and the Parents Associations, becoming a trustee in 1991. All three of these appointees were married to Anatolia alumnae. Greek trustees brought a personal attachment to the College combined with an understanding of local circumstances. At the same time, such appointments were not without hazards. The American model of institutional governance was unfamiliar in Greece, where public services and proprietorships predominated, and private nonprofit organizations, especially schools, were relatively few. Greek governing boards tended to be more controlling, their members given to intervening in adminis-



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

351

tration; personal connections often outweighed institutional loyalties. Moreover, Anatolia’s experience with its Greek Advisory Committee (see chapter 8) had not proved successful in the judgment of successive presidents. Inactive in recent years, it was formally terminated in 1974. What assurance was there that Greek trustees would adopt the principles of Anatolia’s governance structure and cooperate constructively with its administration?21 Such concerns proved unnecessary in the case of Anatolia’s newly designated Greek trustees. The few carefully chosen individuals were honored to be appointed to the governing body of the school to which they felt gratitude and loyalty. They embraced their responsibilities as a solemn trust and made unstinting efforts to render service. All those appointed during these years exercised the prerogatives of trusteeship solely to advance the College’s best interests. As a result, the Board in Boston gained direct access to information and counsel about developments in Greece and at Anatolia from trusted peers. Moreover, the school administration, coping with a wide range of issues during a period marked by strains in Greek-American relations, benefitted from the wise counsel of resident trustees and their influence in the local society. A less significant innovation, though similarly designed to bring the Board into closer contact with the College, was the appointment of “junior alumni trustees.” The president proposed annually a young graduate studying in or near Boston to serve on the Board for one year. The major purpose was to give the trustees access to the views about the College by recent graduates. Such appointments also enabled participating alumni to become informed about their alma mater’s governance and to relay their perceptions to fellow graduates. Following this positive experience, the trustees also began making one-year appointments from among the members of Anatolia’s International Alumni Association, based in Boston.22 The above innovations in Anatolia’s governance were fully backed by Everett Stephens who, during his remaining years as Board chairman, consistently supported the administration’s efforts. Following retirement from Babson College in 1978, he assumed the direction of Anatolia’s stateside fundraising. In appreciation for their long service, the Board in 1982 approved my proposal to rename Minnesota Hall in honor of Everett and Mary Stephens.23 THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION ASSISTS THE COLLEGE AND ITS PRESIDENT Anatolia was exceptional in Thessaloniki as the institution whose graduates maintained close bonds with their classmates and alma mater. Many

352

Chapter 10

alumni endeavored to apply the ideals they had assimilated as students through community projects and efforts to assist the College in its ongoing mission. Their contributions to the College at this time consisted mainly of scholarship donations and public support. The alumni maintained three separate organizations. Besides the largest group (SAAK) in Thessaloniki, graduates in Athens formed a separate association, with the third in the United States based at the Anatolia office in Boston. The Alumni Day homecoming brought graduates back to campus every spring. The Thessaloniki association issued a quarterly publication, Anatolia Alumnus. It also served as a legally qualified channel for tax-deductible donations to the school, mostly for scholarships, and for legitimizing such activities as the Mt. Olympus climb and the Christmas bazaar. SAAK’s executive council held one of its weekly meetings each month at the president’s home on campus. Panayiota “Titika” Vouloni ’61 happened to be among the council members. Following studies in England, Titika was employed by NATO in Izmir, Turkey, and Brussels before being assigned to its regional headquarters in Thessaloniki. Mixing business with pleasure, Titika and I were married in the spring of 1977. A loyal and enthusiastic alumna now assisted the president in serving the school to which they were both devoted. Yet another consequence was a future Anatolia alumna, Melina Vouloni McGrew ’99. VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE AND UNIVERSITY COUNSELING Although Anatolia had enjoyed success in preparing its graduates for higher studies, the opportunity to employ a professional adviser arose when a Fulbright grant brought Jean Woodhead to the campus, where she remained for five years (1974–1979). This seasoned counselor developed the Guidance Office into a resource center assisting students not only to maximize their admissions prospects at foreign universities but also to become better informed about professional opportunities in Greece. She trained staff members to carry on these duties after her departure, including the annual Careers Day that brought over forty professionals to address students about occupations ranging from astrophysics to fashion design. Ifigeneia Sougaraki assisted students to complete applications and meet the testing and other requirements for foreign university entrance and financial assistance.24 Several circumstances caused the number of Anatolians who pursued undergraduate studies in the United States to be limited to fewer than one in ten. Many families were reluctant to allow their offspring to spend their early years so far from home, preferring that they obtain at least their first degree in Greece or some nearby country. Particular obstacles



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

353

arose for those desirous of pursuing two of the most popular professions, law and medicine. Since American legal instruction did not correspond to the Greek system, U.S. degrees could not qualify their holders to practice in Greece. Admission to medical studies in the United States, as in the case of law, normally required four years of undergraduate preparation, a substantial disincentive, given that in Greece such training began immediately after high school. Certainly a major hurdle was financial, since stateside costs were extremely high compared with those in Greece, where public universities charged no tuition, or with other European countries. Anatolia graduates were increasingly drawn to public universities in the United Kingdom where qualified students from EEC (later EC, or European Community) countries were exempt from tuition payments. Of those Anatolians who did apply to American colleges, the great majority requested substantial financial assistance. This meant they had little reason to approach the numerous state universities that rarely awarded scholarships to nonresidents for undergraduate studies. Private institutions at this time represented a small minority, about 22 percent, of the approximately 1,500 awarding the bachelor’s degree. Only a select few accepted foreign applications for financial aid, while limiting such awards and requiring even stronger credentials. Fortunately, those few were mostly ranked among America’s top colleges. Anatolia graduates proved to be exceptionally well qualified for higher studies in the United States, given their English-language training and some familiarity with the country’s culture acquired from their American teachers. A distinct advantage derived from the demanding Greek curriculum in mathematics, where Anatolia enjoyed particular strength. Its students regularly won awards in national competitions by the Greek Mathematics Society. On the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in mathematics, required for admission to most U.S. colleges, and the English test (TOEFL) for applicants whose native language was other than English, Anatolians, on average, approximated the 90th percentile of all examinees. To be sure, they enjoyed some psychological advantage by taking those exams on their own campus, since Anatolia was the designated testing center in the Thessaloniki area for the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey.25 The foregoing strengths were manifested in subsequent performance. Whereas the common dropout rate among freshmen in American colleges was substantial, Anatolians rarely withdrew before graduation. Yet another advantage seems to have been the strong memorization requirements of Greek secondary education. Though commonly criticized as detracting from more creative approaches to learning, it would seem that those rigorous demands aided adolescent learners to strengthen

354

Chapter 10

their mental muscles. The exceptional record of Anatolia graduates over the years built a strong reputation at several admissions offices. Harvard University and MIT regularly admitted one or more Anatolia applicants, frequently with financial aid. MIT commonly asked its freshman students to identify the high school teacher who had most assisted their academic progress. The name reported repeatedly by Anatolians was Vasilis Adam, math instructor (1968–2001). The guidance office maintained a roster of approximately fifty institutions that had responded favorably over the years. Among the Ivy League universities, the most welcoming, after Harvard, were Brown, Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton. For engineering studies, MIT, the California Institute of Technology, Lafayette, and Lehigh opened their doors. A series of Anatolia girls attended financially generous women’s colleges, Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, and Wellesley. A special case was Grinnell College, Anatolia’s long-term patron institution, which in 1983 agreed to provide a full-tuition scholarship every year to an Anatolia graduate. Berea College, with its exceptional free tuition for all students, became a favorite solution for the sons and daughters of Anatolia faculty. Reed College in Oregon enrolled at least sixteen Anatolians, mostly with financial aid. Increasingly over the years, American college representatives traveling abroad to promote their institutions departed from the usual tour circuit to visit Anatolia in its provincial location.26 ANATOLIA BECOMES COEDUCATIONAL Throughout its half century in Greece, Anatolia had maintained separate divisions for female and male students, conforming to the prevailing practice in Greek urban high schools. But over the years, the social distance between the sexes had narrowed in Hellenic society and especially at Anatolia. From the mid-1960s, in particular, there were more shared activities, including assemblies and clubs and a few joint classes. New circumstances arose in the late 1970s when public schools began to adopt coeducation. Not surprisingly, Anatolia’s student council submitted a request that the College quickly follow suit. Most of the faculty members were also in favor, though not all. A committee of teachers and administrators headed by George Draper, the new vice president, recommended a careful implementation of this fundamental reform. Following permission by the Ministry of Education and some adaptation of facilities, from 1981 classes became integrated one year at a time, the process being concluded in 1986.



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

355

By the mid-1980s, Anatolia had become in many ways quite a different institution from that of a decade earlier: coed and with its student body divided into four separate schools of three years’ duration. Not surprisingly, mixed classes were seen to produce a positive change in behavior, especially of male students, in the classrooms, in campus activities, and, notably, on the school buses, always a concern. Another consequence of the new configuration was some degree of competition between the two gymnasia and two lyceums, with parents frequently requesting that their children be assigned to one or the other. Initially the “B” schools (former Boys School) enjoyed the advantage of occupying the larger campus with more facilities, whereas “A” school students were obliged to cross through the tunnel beneath the Panorama highway to share the gym, library, and auditoriums. However, subsequent campus development and other factors worked to balance their relative appeals. Although consideration was given to concentrating both gymnasia on the same campus with the lyceums on the opposite one, it was judged preferable to maintain the full student-age range on both sites. Any prospect of merging the two gymnasia and/or lyceums was precluded by government regulations. Yet another change in campus life resulted from the government order in 1981 discontinuing Saturday morning classes to create a five-day school week. Despite initial concerns that, given the demanding academic program, fewer school hours would impair the important extracurricular offerings, the adjustment was made with little difficulty. A new Greek administrative team oversaw these adaptations. Margarita Falari had retired in 1981 after an exceptional career, honored by the assigning of her name to an annex of Ingle Hall encompassing new classrooms. She was succeeded by Eleni Sgourou, whose previous post as gymnasium dean was taken by Anastasia Baglani. On the “B” campus, Anastasios Kehayias became lyceum dean while Michaelis Nikolaou continued to head the gymnasium.27 ENHANCING ENGLISH INSTRUCTION Efforts to upgrade the English-teaching staff by longer appointments and more careful selection were redoubled. Both the number and quality of applicants rose, spurred by greater interest among young Americans in overseas service and the increasing attraction of Thessaloniki as the city prospered. Several appointees elected to remain for their full careers with the administration’s encouragement. The benefit to the school and its students from long-term and fully committed international teachers can hardly be overstated. Not only did they mature as educators, but they

356

Chapter 10

also developed an attachment to Greece and loyalty to the College. Most important, several of those recruited from abroad came to be among the more senior and respected members of the faculty, exercising influence among Greek colleagues and parents and throughout the Anatolia community.28 The first American teachers to complete their careers at Anatolia were Peter Fay and Alice Eppinga. Helen Tavantzis (1973–2008) supplemented English teaching by variously supervising the girls dormitory, instructing in the Secretarial School, and organizing the Christmas Bazaar. Alexandra “Sandy” Charanis won appreciation for her able direction of theater performances, forensics, and artistic activities. Michael Bash (1973–2006) headed the English department for twenty-one years. Head Librarian Patricia Atkins Kastritsis (1980–1998) also served as high school principal, taught English, and organized forensics competitions. Paula Pappas became a stalwart member of the English department. This core of Americans was reinforced by John Gateley, of English and Greek origin, who taught and later became vice president; Helen Koliais from Great Britain; Vasso Pappas from Australia, and Rodney Coules, originally from Malaysia. Other English teachers remaining for substantial terms included Patrick Martin, Thomas Stone, and Christopher Markham. Many others, though appointed for only one or two three-year terms, rendered notable service to the College. In their senior year, when students were presumed to have mastered their second language, they selected their English courses from among a variety of subjects corresponding to those commonly offered in the first year of American universities. For example, during a single term in 1980, subjects ranged from drama, short stories, and Chaucer’s works to psychology, social history, and the history of architecture. An opportunity to gauge the quality of English teaching arose during one of my unannounced class visits. A senior boys class had completed the reading of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and was assigned by teacher William Siegfried (1977–1981) to design a fictional trial of Brutus. The exercise drew upon the participants’ research, imagination, and language skills. I had not anticipated the creativity and command of English demonstrated by the student actors who staged this courtroom drama. Imaginatively conceived courses could occasionally stray into danger zones. Irwin Stein (1977–1983) assigned seniors in his social anthropology course the task of inquiring of grandparents, aunts, and uncles about their experiences during Greece’s civil war (1946–1949), a subject of such controversy that it was not included in the official curriculum. Some of the resulting reports were dramatic and emotional. Though fully meeting academic standards while affording students insights into their country’s history, the project provoked a reprimand from the Ministry of Educa-



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

357

tion, reminding the College that its foreign teachers must not presume to venture where their Greek colleagues were unauthorized to tread.29 Another component of the American staff were the “teaching interns” appointed for one year mainly to assist in dormitory supervision and extracurricular duties. Normally they taught one English class, until the Education Ministry imposed stricter requirements for foreign teachers in the 1980s. Many applications were received from college seniors seeking experience abroad before beginning postgraduate studies. Grinnell and Princeton were the two leading sources of qualified candidates. In a few instances, they proved to be exceptionally mature and were invited to continue as full-time teachers. An outstanding example was Gunther Peck who came as an intern from Princeton and subsequently taught fulltime, later becoming a professor of history at Duke University. Anatolia’s talented English-teaching staff was largely a product of careful selection and oversight by two successive vice presidents, Gail Schoppert (1972–1978) and George Draper (1978–1983). Though having distinctively different personalities, they brought to Anatolia’s service many of the same qualities. These included full loyalty to the College and the ability to win the confidence of colleagues and the admiration of students. They assumed leading roles in extracurricular activities, including theater, athletics, and forensics. George and Charlotte Draper already knew Anatolia well from their teaching experience in the previous decade. They now bolstered the College as it entered a new era of political challenge in the early 1980s and continued to serve it after returning to the United States where George became a trustee. Another experienced educator was Peter Baiter who served as director of Student Services (1978–1982) until being appointed principal of neighboring Pinewood Schools. 30 SUSTAINING NATIONAL SCHOLARS Assembling a diversified student body by drawing a broad range of youth, socially, economically, and geographically, had always been an important aspect of Anatolia’s mission. To fulfill this purpose, it relied upon its scholarship budget and also upon its dormitories. However, rampant urbanization accompanied by heavy inflation now raised doubts about the school’s ability to continue its boarding operation. As local transportation improved, Thessaloniki residents largely ceased to lodge their children in the College’s dorms, and few families from provincial areas could afford boarding fees. With demographic changes shifting the bulk of the population to cities and towns, many village schools had closed, making it more difficult to find talented rural youth. Such realities had caused the two Athenian schools most comparable to Anatolia

358

Chapter 10

by virtue of their American sponsorship and nonprofit status, Pierce and Athens Colleges, to close their dormitories. Anatolia considered similar action since its numbers of boarders had declined by more than half. That would have meant drawing students only from Thessaloniki and ceasing to bring national scholars from the outlying provinces.31 Anatolia’s leadership resolved to do everything possible to maintain students in residency, even though the number was destined to shrink. One of the first measures was to close the boys dining room in Compton Hall and serve all boarders in Ingle Hall. Such economies were soon found to carry other implications, given changing social mores. Under the new arrangement, males and females now used the same dining room, though for separate dinner hours. At the end of the 1974–1975 school year, seniors Ilias Dinopoulos and Constantinos Syropoulos, elected heads of the boys dorm council, implored that campus life be made more congenial by allowing boys and girls to take dinner together. When their request was granted with evident success, resident students again petitioned to be allowed half an hour of supervised social time after dinner before departing for separate evening study. Though certain counselors warned that improper behavior might result, this was also approved, with the dorm community adjusting happily to the closer relationship. As financial pressures continued to mount, a more radical solution was found in the late 1980s by moving the entire resident boys unit across campus to a single floor of Ingle Hall, the girls occupying the other level. Those measures served to stabilize boarding arrangements for the foreseeable future while also freeing Compton and Stephens Halls for other needs.32 One experience in particular illustrated the human significance of Anatolia’s resident community. Teams of teachers traveled for a weekend every spring to administer the national scholarship exams in provincial centers. I accompanied one such group consisting of teachers Vasiliki Damala, Agni Papademetriou, and Lina Stefa. A scholarship for the Thessaly region had been donated by Mr. Christos Bastis, who years before emigrated from there to New York, where he had established some of the city’s finest restaurants. Among my fondest experiences when fundraising in New York was dining at the Sea Fare of the Aegean restaurant where Mr. Bastis invariably wrote out a check for Anatolia. Applicants completing elementary schools throughout the region assembled for the scholarship exam in the town of Trikala on Saturday. After grading the papers, our team departed early Sunday to visit the homes of the top scorers in order to further assess the candidates and verify their modest financial circumstances. Our last destination was the remote village of Kria Vrisi (Cold Spring), which we had difficulty reaching as the nearest bridge had collapsed. The schoolmaster praised the candidate and



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

359

directed us to his grandfather’s modest cottage on a hill beyond the village. Costas Papageorgiou had grown up there while his parents labored in Germany, from which they had recently returned. After conversing with Costas, his mother, and grandfather, we were about to depart when the father arrived soaked to the waist. Setting out that morning on foot from his distant workplace, he had found the bridge gone and was obliged to wade across the shallow river. The scholarship team recommended Costas for the award, and he proudly arrived the following September. Unfortunately, during his first days on campus he fell and broke a wrist, requiring a large cast. His parents saw this as a negative omen and withdrew him from school, whereupon the scholarship committee summoned an alternate candidate. Two weeks later, his wrist repaired, Costas’s parents entreated the College to readmit their son. Though the original scholarship was no longer available, trustee Doris Riggs, upon hearing the story, came to the rescue and Costas returned. The shortest lad on campus, he earned the respect of fellow students and teachers by his diligence. Upon graduating in 1981, Papageorgiou gained admission to a pedagogical institute and subsequently became a teacher. Such experiences strengthened Anatolia’s resolve to continue as one of the very few schools to recruit scholars from throughout Greece’s provinces. They enriched the campus community with a social profile contrasting with that of urban children, though many of the latter were also from modest circumstances and studied on tuition scholarships.33 POLITICAL STRIFE IN THE 1980s The government of Constantine Karamanlis, which ruled Greece during the early post-Junta years, succeeded in returning the country to democratic administration and in improving its economy. By the beginning of the 1980s, the country enjoyed greater prosperity than it had ever known. Greece’s foreign relations also recovered their balance as the country resumed full membership in NATO, and in early 1981 took the historic step of joining the European Economic Community, thereby binding itself institutionally to Western Europe. Nevertheless, a growing portion of the electorate came to believe that the time had arrived to allow the moderate left to govern. Andreas Papandreou led the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party (PASOK) to victory in 1981, bringing a socialist government to power for the first time. Papandreou found the popular resentment against perceived U.S. obstruction of Greece’s national interests to be one source of public support. Efforts by the United States to maintain an evenly balanced relationship with both its Greek and Turkish allies faltered before

360

Chapter 10

the continuing enmity between those two countries, aggravated by the unresolved Cyprus dispute.34 Widespread reservations about American influence in Greece inevitably prompted some speculation about Anatolia’s true purposes. The reality was that its mission was purely educational without political motive or dimension. Incorporated under American law as a private institution, it had no involvement in U.S. government operations. In fact, its Board in Boston was so insistent upon the College’s nongovernmental character as to question whether it should apply for USAID grants, with some trustees expressing opposition to a private school drawing upon public resources.35 In Greece, on the other hand, much ambiguity surrounded popular perception of the few foreign schools as regarded sponsorship and objectives, especially given their confusing variety. For example, the two German schools reestablished some years after World War II in Thessaloniki and Athens were subsidized and administered by the German state, whereas French-language schools were mostly organized by the Catholic Church with backing from the French government. Cultural agreements with those European governments provided for the operation of their schools while extending reciprocal privileges to Greek schools in those countries. Anatolia, by contrast, an independent, nonprofit foreign school, conformed to no familiar European model, while the U.S. government eschewed comparable treaties. Anatolia’s exceptional status was not easily grasped by the public or by officialdom.36 Yet another factor coloring the Greek perception of the purposes of Americans in their country at this time were the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. Though its significance may have been exaggerated, it is evident that the CIA engaged in practices in Greece and elsewhere that would not have been allowed in the United States. Moreover, its clandestine methods compromised all resident Americans, including the personnel of educational, business, and other professional organizations who became liable to suspicion of serving purposes other than those of their ostensible occupations. The implications of such mistrust took on greater significance following the assassination of the CIA station chief in Athens in 1975 by a leftist terrorist organization, the first in a long series of such crimes. Anatolia’s position with regard to that agency was clearly stated in a directive from Trustee Chairman Everett Stephens: “I am sure that I don’t need to say this to you but for the record will, that no one at Anatolia is to give any information of any sort to anyone suspected to be in any way connected with the CIA. I cannot think of any way that we might faster destroy ourselves in Greece than to become involved in any way with that organization.” I fully agreed with chairman Stephens. To the best of my knowledge, no one at Anatolia had any involvement with the CIA.37



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

361

The PASOK government aspired to further modernize the country, extend benefits to previously disadvantaged groups, and free its foreign relations from excessive American influence. Its drive to reshape Greek society designated education as a key target for reform, whereas its reliance upon support from the far left caused it to entertain a number of radical objectives. One explicit goal became the closure of all private and foreign schools. Although the measures implemented over the next few years did not reach that extreme, they caused many schools to close, while seriously obstructing those that survived. As education became a political battlefield, the early 1980s proved to be one of the most trying eras for Anatolia in Greece. The many encumbrances of these years included delays and threatened refusals by the Ministry of Education to renew the annual approvals for Anatolia’s long-standing “deviations” from the standard curriculum allowing it to offer more hours of English, laboratory science, and other subjects. Up to nineteen Greek and American teaching positions were jeopardized. Minor subjects such as music, art, and physical education were no longer allowed to be taught in English, even though the law of 1931 regulating foreign schools so authorized. New legislation forbade private schools from discharging teachers for any cause, allowing no trial period for new appointees. Final examinations in all three years of the lyceum now had to be monitored by public school teachers, implying that private institutions were untrustworthy. A major new encumbrance on private schools was the prohibition of entrance exams, with the single exception that foreign schools might test applicants in the school’s second language. The reason for that exemption was presumably to ensure reciprocity for Greek schools serving emigrant workers, especially in Germany. Henceforth, Anatolia tested applicants only in English, which favored families able to invest in language preparation while creating a problem for scholarship applicants, especially those from rural areas with little knowledge of the language. Restrictions on private school tuition kept increases well below the mandatory raises in teacher salaries during a time of heavy inflation. Following several years of modest budget surpluses, Anatolia began registering deficits in 1983 as salaries, the largest single expense, rose by 82 percent over the next three years, while tuition increased by only 53 percent. Delays or denials of permission for athletic and forensics teams and the chorale to travel for matches and performances impeded exchanges with schools in Athens. On one occasion, the forensics team, having prepared for months for the annual tournament in the capital, arrived at school Friday morning with suitcases ready to board the bus for a noon departure but without the permit requested weeks earlier from the Inspectorate of Foreign Schools. It was only after hours of repeated phone calls to Athens

362

Chapter 10

that verbal assent was secured and anxious students were able to depart for the weekend competition. Another setback at this time was the revocation of Anatolia’s longstanding license for its Secretarial School. It continued to function under an ambiguous law as a “Workshop of Free Studies,” but without an official permit. Similar denial of permission for Anatolia’s English-language center in downtown Thessaloniki, which had operated for over a decade in collaboration with the American Center (USIS) and had reached an enrollment of more than three hundred adults, obliged it to close in 1987, though some of its programs were resumed on the College campus. The most invasive of the PASOK measures was the establishment of a separate Directorate of Foreign Schools in Thessaloniki. Previously all foreign-sponsored schools were overseen by the Inspectorate in Athens. The director of the new office brought unprecedented interference in the operation of Thessaloniki’s very few foreign schools. Among other things, he ruled that Anatolia’s president might communicate with its faculty only through the school’s Greek deans, might not intervene in the work of the deans and teachers or evaluate their performance, and that Anatolia might communicate with other schools for such purposes as arranging athletic meets or other events only through his office.38 Although the severe controls on private education introduced at this time reflected the zeal of PASOK’s reformers, they also illustrated longstanding features of Greek governance. Upon its liberation from Ottoman rule, the country had adopted the continental European model that concentrated vast authority in the state as the embodiment of nationhood and the paramount force for achieving goals of survival and expansion. The state mechanism evolved in subsequent decades to monopolize a wide range of powers and functions while also providing the primary source of employment. To the popular mind, the state’s broad authority was largely unquestioned, irrespective of how effectively it performed public services. Education, in particular, was viewed as a social good to which every citizen was entitled, not to be sold on the market but provided by the state. Public schools were entrusted to transmit Greece’s cultural heritage and shape the values and loyalties of its citizens. This outlook, of course, contrasted with the American concept of a central government as a necessary but imperfect and even potentially harmful force, requiring limitations on its power and functions, and the entitlement of a host of private and regional agencies to serve the general well-being and provide services such as education. These contrasting concepts of the respective roles of state and private or local entities for serving the public good seemed to underlie much of Anatolia’s ongoing tension with the Ministry of Education. The bottom line, of course, was that Anatolia was a guest in a sovereign country and fully subject to its laws.39



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

363

Anticipating the likelihood of initiatives by the newly elected government that might impinge upon Anatolia’s operation, the trustees in the spring of 1982 had reaffirmed the institution’s principles and policies. The subsequent developments cited above were seen to be altogether inconsistent with that formulation. Various measures were thereupon considered for defending the school’s values and overcoming increasing bureaucratic impositions. The most extreme included closing the boys lyceum, where the most recalcitrant faculty were concentrated, not admitting a new fall class, or even terminating the school altogether. The trustees instructed the president to prepare an estimate of indemnification costs in case of the school closing.40 That such severe steps could be seriously entertained illustrated the frustration on the part of the trustees and administration in seeking to preserve some measure of autonomy for the College. Fortunately, positive features of the school’s operation sustained hopes for a better future once political passions waned, thus forestalling extreme measures. Its graduates continued to gain top places in Greek, American, and European universities. Student participation in extracurricular activities remained strong, with exceptional performances in theater and athletics. At the 1984 forensics (i.e., speech) competition held in Athens, three of the four English-language debate teams to reach the semifinals were from Anatolia, with the team of Joseph Ktenides and Panos Stoyiannos taking the cup. The student chess club placed first among over one hundred schools in a local tournament. The same year, perhaps the most trying for the College during that era, its graduating class demonstrated exceptional achievements in academics and activities. Especially encouraging was the steady rise in admission applications, demonstrating the public’s high regard for Anatolia. A positive spirit was sustained through the efforts of the great majority of faculty and staff who remained loyal to the College and its mission. The sound counsel by Anatolia’s Greek trustees, its legal adviser, and the president of the Parents Association and later trustee, Angelos Billis, helped steer it through this challenging time. Support came also from Stelios Papathemelis, parent of an Anatolia student, who held a high position in the Education Ministry and later became Minister of Northern Greece. Trustee Chairman Gullion made unceasing efforts to present Anatolia’s case in Washington, D.C., to the Greek Embassy, State Department officials, and members of Congress. On one occasion, a university professor who was also the father of three Anatolia students visited my office to declare that, for his family, Anatolia embodied the essential values of Western democracy; if it were to close, their world would collapse. It was with full confidence, therefore, that I was able to assure the trustees that Anatolia “continues to enrich the lives of its students to a degree unparalleled by any other educational institution in northern Greece.”41

364

Chapter 10

The sharp ideological clashes in Greek society at this time and their consequences for education posed dilemmas for Anatolia in such areas as teacher selection. The administration adhered to the principle that hiring decisions should be based solely on academic qualifications, whereas political beliefs were strictly a personal concern. This liberal stance continued Anatolia’s practices from the pre-Junta era when many of its most devoted teachers held political views barring their employment in public schools. Whatever their personal beliefs, they had scrupulously avoided imposing them upon their students and colleagues. By the mid-1970s, however, circumstances and attitudes had changed with the heavy politicization of education. The teachers employed at that time included a very few who imposed their political biases upon the discharge of their duties to the extent of undermining the school’s operation. Dealing with such circumstances weighed heavily upon the administration’s efforts over the succeeding years. The intense political climate of the post-Junta years brought other surprises. On one occasion, the U.S. Embassy requested that I visit its security office in Athens. There I was told that the “November 17” terrorist organization, which had already carried out several assassinations, was reportedly targeting for its next “hit” an American in Greece with previous U.S. government service. The Embassy felt obliged to inform me that I was among a very few individuals it had identified who fit that profile. Anatolia’s trials under the PASOK government reached a climax of sorts in 1985. At about the time that Deputy Minister of Education Petros Moralis proudly announced that over two hundred private schools had closed during his tenure, the College received an order from the Ministry to replace half of its foreign teachers, numbering about twenty among a total faculty of approximately sixty-five, with Greeks. Had that order been enforced, it is questionable whether the College would have continued to operate. By good fortune, Paul Sarbanes, the highly regarded U.S. senator of Greek ancestry, was visiting Greece at that time. At a meeting in Athens, the senator sympathetically heard my account of the adverse directive and agreed to raise the issue with Prime Minister Papandreou. The result was a new ruling by the Ministry that Anatolia might have up to twenty foreign teachers, providing some of them were of Greek ancestry, a condition fully acceptable to the College, which already included among its American teachers several of Greek origin. This accord resolved an issue that might well have led to Anatolia’s closing. Any regrets that political intervention had to be invoked were outweighed by appreciation for Senator Sarbanes’s constructive role. He continued to be a friend of the College, visiting occasionally and also treating a group of vacationing Anatolia teachers to a tour of the U.S. Senate.42



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

365

From this point, relations with the government gradually improved as public support for PASOK’s more radical goals began to wane. In 1986 the Education Ministry closed its Directorate of Foreign Schools in Thessaloniki. Henceforth, for most purposes Anatolia came under the secondary educational authority for the region, whose personnel proved cooperative and less inclined toward bureaucratic intervention. State controls on tuition charges were also relaxed, enabling the College in most years to balance its budget, though they were imposed again occasionally and unpredictably. The private teachers’ union’s goal of abolishing all private schools came to be identified with the extreme leftist political fringe and was supported less strongly by the ruling PASOK party or by most teachers. Only a few Anatolia teachers continued to participate in strikes. The passage of the post-Junta decade also brought the easing of rebellious attitudes toward authority in general, including toward the state, family, and school, as youthful behavior became more amenable. Although another dark cloud loomed in 1988 when PASOK introduced new restrictions on private schools that would have led to most of them closing, that measure was withdrawn following widespread protests. Parents of private school students, including members of the Anatolia Parents Association led by President Peter Apostolides, demonstrated their opposition by adopting the hitherto extremist tactic of marching in the streets. Parents also responded generously to the College’s appeal for contributions to reduce its deficit inflicted by yet another government limitation on school fees. Though further trials remained, Anatolia had weathered the worst of the political storm of the 1980s.43 The events of this time also demonstrated, somewhat ironically, Anatolia’s good fortune in not having succeeded in acquiring the long soughtafter status of “equivalency with the public school.” This legal designation conferring benefits upon certain schools in earlier years (see chapter 8) later came to impose onerous constraints and greater state interference. CELEBRATING THE CENTENNIAL Anatolia concluded a hundred years of service to young people across two continents in the firm belief that its mission remained valid despite periodic adaptation to new circumstances. A series of celebratory events extending over more than a year included the following: •  A conference hosted by Anatolia on the theme “Greece and Asia Minor” where thirty-five scholars from several countries made presentations. The United States–based Modern Greek Studies Association helped organize the event and published a selection of the papers.

366

Chapter 10

•  A series of public lectures, several of them featured on national television, by prominent figures including the new U.S. ambassador, Robert V. Keeley, and Helen Glykatzi-Ahrweiler, chancellor of the Sorbonne University in Paris. •  Publications including the memoirs of former President Carl Compton, entitled The Morning Cometh: 45 Years with Anatolia College; and Survival Against All Odds: The First 100 Years of Anatolia College, by Trustee Chairman Emeritus Everett Stephens and Mrs. Mary Stephens. Other special occasions included performances by the Anatolia chorale and folk dance team; demonstrations of laboratory techniques by the Chemistry Department; a Christmas concert where two hundred Anatolia students and teachers performed, followed by a spring music festival; exhibits of art, ceramics, and photography works of students, alumni, and staff; banquets given by the Rotary and Lions Clubs honoring Anatolia; and a special awards ceremony for senior students who scaled Mt. Olympus that fall, at which the Thessaloniki Hiking Association honored Anatolia’s contribution to mountaineering. The highest centennial honor was the Silver Medal of the prestigious Academy of Athens conferred at a ceremony in the capitol attended by trustees and alumni. On the other side of the Atlantic, Governor Dukakis declared “Anatolia College Day” in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.44 The Centennial also inspired the first visit organized by the College to its original site in Asia Minor. Fifty staff members, alumni, and friends embarked on a ten-day bus journey to Turkey’s Pontus region, where the mayor of Merzifon welcomed us cordially. We were not allowed to enter the military base occupying the former campus but could discern the old clock tower above its walls. Several of our travelers visited ancestral villages along the way, in some instances experiencing emotional reunions with long-distant relatives. The tour included visits to the regional center of Amasia and Black Sea coastal towns where many early students had originated. The Merzifon trip rekindled awareness of Anatolia’s dramatic origins across the Aegean.45 The celebration presented the opportunity, while commemorating past accomplishments, to also take stock of the future. One consequence was a restatement of Anatolia’s fundamental precepts, intended to guide the institution into its second century: The Ten Principles of the Anatolia College Ethos 1.  Peace and good will to all. 2.  Service to one’s fellow man and woman.



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

367

 3. Devotion to democratic values and behavior.  4. Loyalty to the Hellenic nation and to Greek culture.  5. Individualism, the belief that independent, self-reliant, confident individuals equipped with moral training will construct a good society.  6. Belief in the worth and dignity of hard and honest work.  7. Commitment to material progress for all, but not to luxury.  8. Tolerance of all religions, philosophies, points of view.  9. The importance of athletic activity for mental and physical wellbeing, governed always by an ethical code of sportsmanship. 10.  Trust in education as the primary vehicle for ennobling the individual and improving society. The Centennial, involving trustees, students, staff, alumni, parents, and unprecedented numbers of friends throughout Greece and abroad, helped to usher the school into a new and productive era. One measure of the new era was applications for admission, which reached a new high in the fall of 1986.46 MEETING FINANCIAL CHALLENGES Given its humanitarian mission, Anatolia seemed destined to operate with a narrow financial margin. A variety of factors shaped the College’s fortunes, including the quality of its management, the state of Greece’s economy, government regulation of salary and tuition levels, the size of its endowment, and success in finding donations in the United States and Greece. As recounted earlier, these and other influences had sometimes pushed the school’s finances into dangerously negative territory. On the positive side, the school enjoyed recognition by the Greek state as a nonprofit entity with exemptions from taxation on its income, property, and, subject to limitations, the earnings of its foreign staff. Moreover, during the years under consideration, its financial management benefitted from its longest period of sustained competence, due in large degree to the capabilities of Business Manager (later Director of Administration) Byron Alexiades (1972–1997), succeeded by Dr. Panos Kanellis ’66. The main source of income was student tuition, accounting at this time for about three-quarters of the normal operating budget. Return from the endowment provided another 5 percent, more than half earmarked for scholarships. For the remainder of its income for operations, as well as for major improvements to the campus, the College depended upon proceeds from a variety of sources both in Greece and the United States.

368

Chapter 10

Maximizing these essential revenues constituted one of the administration’s primary challenges.47 Soon after assuming the presidency, I made a decision to be regretted for the next twenty-five years. Only shortly before, Anatolia’s director for development based in Boston had been assigned to report directly to the president rather than to the trustee chairman as was formerly done. This move had brought Anatolia into conformity with standard practice among American private institutions. My initial perception, unfortunately, was that Anatolia’s geographical divide made it a special case, with the president improperly situated to oversee such important activity based in faraway Boston. In view of the many challenging issues the College faced in Greece, managing stateside development efforts from the distant campus seemed hardly feasible. Contrary advice from an experienced educator and friend, Bruce Lansdale, president of the neighboring American Farm School, that such a key responsibility must not be forfeited from the CEO’s control, failed to overcome my reservations. On the other hand, Trustee Chairman Stephens was more than willing to resume supervision of the fundraising operation from Boston. By the time I came to realize that the important development operation could succeed only if aggressively engineered by the president with logistical support in the United States by trustees and staff, the opportunity had passed. The director for fundraising, based at the “Office of the Trustees,” reported either to the Board chairman or to a trustee development committee, whereas the question of returning that charge to the president became a perennial “turf” issue between Boston and Thessaloniki. Functionally as well as geographically distant from the College and its needs, the office’s staff became more occupied with trustee relations and other stateside matters than with actively seeking financial support for the school. The president remained responsible for development efforts in Greece while also making yearly fundraising trips to the United States, where his working relationship with the director remained ambiguous at best. This organizational anomaly proved to be a severe handicap to efforts for securing resources for Anatolia.48 The exceptionally effective teamwork achieved by Chairman John Chapman and President Bob Hayden in the 1960s had produced a network of supporters across the United States. Subsequent efforts were designed to maintain and expand the teams of committed volunteers able and willing to promote Anatolia in their regions. Their tasks were to form promotional groups, identify potential donors, and solicit contributions while also organizing occasions for the president to meet leading prospects during his fundraising trips. This effort was greatly aided by Anatolia’s legal exemption from federal taxation by virtue of its nonprofit



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

369

status. The most effective and enduring centers of support are worthy of mention. In Boston, Anatolia’s U.S. base by virtue of its incorporation in Massachusetts, the largest concentration of its trustees labored to promote the school’s interests by overseeing its administration and supervising its legal and financial management while also making individual monetary contributions. For many years trustee Helen Pappas Crane led a group of mostly Greek American ladies who organized frequent fundraising events. Chicago had long been a major source of support, largely through the Chicago Friends of Anatolia College. The pastor of nearby Kenilworth Union Church, trustee Gilbert Bowen, secured a steady flow of gifts from his congregation, while bringing to the campus groups of teenage church members on summer tours. Mary Hill Surpless, former Girls School teacher and trustee, was one of the most loyal contributors. Anatolia succeeded in becoming the largest beneficiary for many years of the Chicago-based Nicholas Demos Foundation, largely through the influence of University of Chicago historian William H. McNeill, who served on the foundation’s board. It was the most significant among the five established funds that provided major financial support for many years. The others were the previously mentioned Sofia American Schools that made annual contributions from its endowment before resuming operations in Bulgaria following the collapse of Communist rule; the Demosthenis Raptelis Foundation whose grants enabled a series of youths from the island of Lesvos (Mitilini) to study at Anatolia; the Cleveland H. Dodge Foundation; and the Michael Anagnos Schools. It was Anatolia’s good fortune to win the support of one of California’s most highly esteemed Greek Americans, State Senator Nicholas Petris, who hosted my visits, organized receptions, and made introductions to prospective donors. Trustee Petris was also instrumental in concluding a “sister city” accord between San Francisco and Thessaloniki. On the occasion of its signing in 1990, Anatolia hosted a campus reception for the two mayors and the delegation of seventy Californians. Anatolia’s long relationship with Grinnell College helped to sustain continuing involvement by friends in Iowa. Curtis Lamb, Grinnell graduate, prewar teacher at Anatolia, and later trustee, contributed generously while eliciting support from former student Dr. Alexander Matthews, entrepreneur John Pappajohn, and others. Anatolia’s mainstay for development efforts in New York City was former student and shipping entrepreneur William Drakos, who organized receptions and made generous contributions. Lewis Strauss, Jr., of Washington, D.C., provided a long series of scholarships for Jewish students.49

370

Chapter 10

While the strongest bases of support were developed in the areas just cited, revenues were also produced by initiatives in other regions, particularly Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia. Anatolia was fortunate in winning the devotion of a host of benefactors over the years, some alumni, others simply drawn to the College’s mission. A few instances are so compelling as to merit presentation here. The accomplishments of the Aghnides brothers, Athanasios and Nicholas, students at Merzifon, were noted earlier. Nicholas, a successful investor, received me at his Manhattan office and, while keeping an eye on the flashing stock prices, verified that he had provided for Anatolia in his will. Indeed he had, to the extent of over a quarter of a million dollars. They also persuaded their third brother, Elie, despite having no direct connection to Anatolia, to grant the bulk of his estate, with the result that Anatolia received a second legacy of $2 million.50 As those familiar with institutional fundraising well know, timing and chance can be factors making for success or otherwise. That lesson came my way when George Yemenetzis ’32, having concluded a career at the U.S. Consulate General in Thessaloniki, suggested that a former consul general might be willing to assist Anatolia. Philip and Marjory Ireland received me at their Washington, D.C., home but regretfully imparted that both had suffered health setbacks and could not make any commitment at that time. Only a few years later, the Irelands left Anatolia a bequest of $2.1 million. Their kindness is remembered every year by the Philip and Marjory Ireland Humanitarian and Public Service Award.51 Another contribution of unexpected magnitude originated from former dean Mary Ingle’s friendship with Winifred Weter, professor of classics at Seattle Pacific University, who for many years supported a series of scholarships. During her 1996 visit, as we toured archeological sites near Thessaloniki, this dedicated philhellene confided that she was “putting her affairs in order” and would provide for Anatolia. Nearly a decade later, word arrived that she had left the school its largest gift ever, over $4.4 million!52 A very special instance of benevolence came from the family of Frank (Phanos) and Antigone Raphael, refugees from Asia Minor who had prospered in Detroit and developed a close attachment to Anatolia. In recognition of the family’s long assistance Anatolia in 1993 named a new auditorium for the Raphaels. Within Greece, Anatolia’s chief benefactor for decades was trustee Stavros Constantinides, who directed a steady stream of gifts for scholarships and campus improvements. Lucas P. Kyrides, alumnus of 1902, made a major donation, as did Anastasia Yerakopoulou-Vafopoulou ’34 and trustees Dimitris Zannas, Alexander Perry, and Ernest Chepou, the latter’s name adorning an auditorium in Kyrides Hall. Trustee Elbert E. Moore Jr.,



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

371

European representative of Ethyl Corporation, brought contributions from his company while also making personal gifts. American firms headquartered in Athens, notably American Express, Ideal Standard, Mobil, Philip Morris, S. C. Johnson and Sons, Singer Sewing Machine, Squibb Hellas, and Texaco, consistently provided scholarships, as did the Propeller Club. Dresser Minerals financed scholars from the Cycladic Islands, where it had mining operations. A host of alumni supported their school over the years, particularly by funding “class scholarships.” The Boutaris family, leaders in the wine industry, most of whose members attended Anatolia, for many years donated beverages for major school events and assisted in other ways. Anatolia’s faculty and staff regularly made contributions for scholarships and for other special purposes.53 The benefactors cited above represent only a small portion of the countless friends on both sides of the Atlantic who have rendered assistance. Anatolia will forever be grateful to the many individuals who gave generously of their personal resources, motivated by their trust in its mission and their desire to advance education in Greece. Following these and other donations, the endowment rose from $2 million in 1978 to $24 million by 1999. This impressive upturn was due also to a steady rise in the value of the American securities where Anatolia’s holdings were invested with the expert management of several trustees in the investment profession.54 It has been noted that the 1980s were a particularly trying time for Anatolia financially, given government restrictions on tuition combined with sharply rising costs. Revenues in the United States were rarely adequate to cover the costs of the trustees’ office together with legal, accounting, and auditing charges. Endowment income, despite its impressive growth, was earmarked mostly for such expenses or for scholarships. Scholarship funds served an important institutional objective but did not provide additional operating income, since scholars simply replaced paying students. Meanwhile, in Thessaloniki the several international firms that had assisted Anatolia (ESSO, Ethyl, Goodyear, Bank of America, St. Regis Paper) ceased operation largely in reaction to high labor costs and policies of the socialist government. Consequently, the College was obliged to resort at times to such undesirable expedients as increasing class size or reducing student financial assistance.55 It became imperative, therefore, to develop new sources of income within Greece. These fell roughly into two categories: revenue-producing activities and direct contributions. The former included, most notably, testing services, which expanded steadily as more young people sought internationally recognized credentials. Anatolia became the sole testing center in northern Greece for virtually all the major American qualifying exams. Of particular significance was the University of Michigan’s

372

Chapter 10

English Proficiency Examination, which the Education Ministry had designated as the standard credential for a wide range of teaching and other services. Administered in Thessaloniki initially by the U.S. Information Service (USIS), Anatolia assumed this responsibility in 1976. To meet the rising demand for the Michigan diploma, reaching several thousand candidates annually, we opened testing centers in outlying towns in addition to conducting exams on campus and at other sites in Thessaloniki. The College also initiated a variety of other offerings, including advanced English classes for bilingual children, specialized language instruction for business firms, a summer day camp that drew hundreds of youths, and hospitality for visitors from the well-known Elderhostel organization. It also leased out facilities for summer activities, especially the wellattended basketball camp. With a view to augmenting donations, former business manager Prodromos Ebeoglou recommended reactivating the “Friends of Anatolia,” which years earlier had rallied alumni, parents, and others. Angelos Billis in 1985 became the first president of the new organization whose sole objective as defined by its charter was to assist Anatolia materially. Over a decade and a half, the Friends’ activities, largely lectures, exhibits, dinners, and an annual summer ball, drew wide participation and contributions. By bringing prominent personalities to the campus, they projected the school nationwide, while netting over $1.3 million in revenues.56 Proceeds from services and contributions largely served to fill the gap between expenditures and income from tuition and endowment, thereby sustaining the College during those trying times.57 UPGRADING THE CAMPUS THROUGH USAID/ASHA As the College struggled to balance its budget, slim financial margins left scant means for improving its aging campus. It was Anatolia’s good fortune to enjoy continuing access to U.S. government funding through the Office of American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA), the division of USAID (since 1961) that assisted American-sponsored educational and medical institutions in designated countries. Since the first grant for Ingle Hall in 1959, Anatolia had received intermittent funding in the 1960s. Over the following years, a succession of ASHA grants sustained its efforts to extend and improve the physical plant. ASHA functioned as a relatively small operation by the standards of its parent organization but was of immense importance to the institutions receiving its support. Greece’s rising prosperity had caused USAID to end its assistance to the country after 1962. Nevertheless, ASHA continued to accept applications from the very few American-sponsored schools



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

373

serving the Greek public. Its management set high standards for selecting recipients from among scores of competing institutions worldwide. Following criteria mandated by the U.S. Congress, it required thoroughly documented applications and conducted frequent on-campus inspections. During annual visits to the ASHA office in Washington, D.C., I came to have a high regard for its small but dedicated staff. Grants at this time were restricted mostly to physical plant improvements, including not only construction but renovation, maintenance, and furnishings. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, USAID/ASHA awards totaling approximately $6 million enabled Anatolia to modernize its campus into one of the very finest in Greece. A longstanding ambition was to replace the former German barracks converted into a small athletic court with a proper facility where classes could meet and teams train and compete. A USAID/ASHA grant totaling $755,000 enabled Anatolia to erect and furnish a modern gymnasium that opened in 1976. Conforming to the original design for a quadrangular campus for the Boys School (of which only two sides actually materialized), it occupied the corner space between Macedonia and Minnesota (later Stephens) Halls. Its main floor accommodated a full court adaptable for a variety of sports and seating for over eight hundred, while ancillary spaces provided changing rooms, lockers and showers, a gymnastics area, a dance and ballet hall, offices and storerooms, and a guest apartment. A plaque at the entrance read: “A gift to the Youth of Greece from the People of the United States.” Anatolia was the first school in northern Greece to acquire such a facility, which brought a new dimension to campus life. It enabled the College to host visiting teams and organize events such as the annual Aegean Basketball Tournament with schools from Athens and abroad. Competitive sports drew greater student participation and achieved higher levels of performance, as evidenced by the success of the girls basketball team in reaching the semifinals of the national scholastic competition in 1981. The Alumni Association’s teams used it as their home court for evening matches. The College was able to meet operational costs by evening, weekend, and summer rentals, the last including an annual basketball camp whose participants resided in the dormitories. The gym drew national and even international attention. The Balkan Junior Volleyball Tournament was held there with teams from five countries. In 1982 the NCAA championship team from the University of North Carolina used Anatolia’s gym to practice for a basketball tournament with teams from Greece and Yugoslavia. Michael Jordan, not yet having achieved professional fame, was named the competition’s most valuable player.58 Following the gym and repairs to buildings damaged by the 1978 earthquake, the most significant works were a new library, a separate building

374

Chapter 10

housing an auditorium named in honor of the Raphael family, new and improved science laboratories, faculty housing, and extensive upgrading of the campus infrastructure, including a water well. The construction of Raphael Hall and the renovation of Pappas and Chepou Halls achieved a long envisioned goal: together with Tracy Hall, they now enabled each of the two lyceums and two gymnasiums to have its own auditorium for lectures, plays, concerts, and other events, with morning assemblies no longer having to be held outdoors.59 A most significant enhancement of the secondary school was the new library erected in 1989 through an ASHA grant of $600,000. Situated on the “A” side (former Girls School) of the campus, this 1,765-square-meter building provided seating for 200 students, shelves for 45,000 volumes, and a faculty study area. It included an audiovisual amphitheater, a handsome seminar room, staff offices, and a computer center equipped through trustee contributions. The library was later named in honor of former Anatolia librarian (1929–1934) Socrates Eleftheriades ’30 and teacher Mrs. Olga Mavrophidou-Eleftheriadou (1940–1946; 1953–1954) following their major gift to the school. The library greatly boosted Anatolia’s endeavor to deliver an inspired amalgam of Greek and American education. Given that the state curriculum prescribed a single textbook for courses, without requiring further reading or research, most Greek schools saw little need for additional books and few invested in libraries. Anatolia, while implementing the state curriculum, encouraged students to broaden and deepen their learning experience by exploring the library’s open-shelf collection and borrowing books. Moreover, the library served as a resource center for extracurricular activities as well as a favorite place for faculty to meet and prepare lessons. By virtue of its computer labs and well-equipped amphitheater, it also became the locus for introducing staff and students to information technology. A campus-wide task force designed new electronic applications, assisted by a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Under librarian Patricia Kastritsis, the Eleftheriades Library grew and flourished. Remaining open evenings and Saturdays for boarding students and visitors, it came to serve in many ways as Anatolia’s cultural center.60 One significant campus renovation resulted from an external cause, namely, a new throughway that intersected the Panorama road serving Anatolia. Initial concerns that the project might impinge harmfully upon the campus proved unwarranted, although it did take about an acre of land, with full compensation to the school. The most important consequence was the relocation of the main entrance to be in alignment with a new intersection and traffic light. This, together with paving and other improvements to campus roads and parking, was accomplished mostly through ASHA funds. The new highway made Anatolia more accessible



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

375

to the twenty-five buses contracted to bring students to and from the city and its suburbs daily. Another campus enhancement resulted from the generosity of trustee Theodore Alexiadis and Ioanna Sarakaki-Alexiadou, 1966 alumni. Since 1997, a handsome Orthodox chapel adorning a pine-studded knoll has provided a venue for religious celebrations as well as marriages and baptisms of alumni and friends. A future addition to Anatolia’s facilities was destined to follow the departure of Pinewood Schools. Established on the campus’s western flank in 1963 under a twenty-year agreement that was renewed for one equivalent period, Pinewood had gained stature over the years. Its small international student body had little interaction with Anatolia, except that some of its students shared the boarding facilities in Ingle Hall. As the conclusion of its lease drew near, Pinewood’s board requested an extension to enable it to better prepare for relocation. Accordingly, an agreement concluded in 1999 allowed the school to remain five years beyond the contractual date of 2003. Pinewood Schools could proudly cite its service of forty-five years to the youth of many nations while based on Anatolia’s campus.61 The task of devising solutions for the many issues affecting the campus environment was shouldered by the Physical Planning Committee, composed of administrative staff and advisers who volunteered their services, the latter including most notably trustee Stavros Constantinides and architects Olga Vouloni ’68, Petros Makridis ’63, and Alekos Tsokos. SMOOTHER SAILING IN THE 1990s Anatolia’s experience during the postwar decades had shown that three conditions were essential for realizing its highest potential for serving Greek youth: •  A positive, or at least neutral, stance on the part of the Greek state, enabling the school to satisfy official requirements while also achieving its own educational goals. •  Close cooperation between the Board of Trustees based in Boston and the executive leadership in Thessaloniki to carry out the College’s mission. •  Harmonious collaboration among the Greek directors, the faculty, and the American administration in pursuing common objectives. As to the first condition, the ideological antipathies generated by the civil war and reignited by the Junta eased considerably after nearly a

376

Chapter 10

decade of socialist rule. Passions cooled as the two main parties, PASOK and New Democracy, moved closer to the center of the political spectrum. Contributing factors were the country’s adaptation to membership in the European Union and communism’s collapse in Eastern Europe. With the waning of the Cold War, Greek-American relations became less volatile; the last U.S. military base in the Thessaloniki region closed in the early 1990s. Private education also became less controversial, with new schools opening and much of the popular press moving from a hostile disposition to frequently commendatory articles. The earlier animus shown by Education Ministry officials toward an American school that needed their permits and approvals was far less evident, although the Ministry continued to exercise excessive control over all schools.62 As regards the second condition, new circumstances helped to offset the physical and cultural distance between Thessaloniki and Boston that had encumbered relations between successive presidents and the Board of Trustees. More convenient and affordable air travel enabled American trustees to visit more often. To achieve closer liaison with the College, the Board resolved to hold one of its two annual meetings in Thessaloniki. Improved phone connections enabled the president to participate in monthly meetings of the trustee Executive Committee, thereby opening an important channel of communication. Meanwhile, more alumni in Greece, having been appointed to the Board, gained experience in trusteeship and won the confidence of their colleagues in Boston. No less important, devoted and capable individuals assumed Board leadership. Dr. Julian Haynes, an experienced educator, was chairman from 1987 to 1992. He was succeeded by George S. Bissell, who had served as trustee for a quarter of a century and enjoyed the high respect of fellow board members. These able chairs showed consideration for the challenges faced by the administration as well as tolerance of its shortcomings. Although there continued to be divergences in outlook between Boston and Thessaloniki, there was now a better context for addressing them. Finally, the more benign political climate and easing of controversy over private and foreign-sponsored education reverberated within the school. A faculty previously torn by internal factions in alignment with rival political causes became less restive and more cooperative. One reason for this favorable turn was that the state had satisfied most of the demands of the private teachers’ union, other than its insistence upon the abolition of private education, which most teachers in fact opposed. Meanwhile, the College had succeeded in increasing its teachers’ remuneration to significantly more than that of their public school counterparts, in return for the greater time and effort asked of them. Yet another factor was the retirement or dismissal of a very few teachers who had refused to cooper-



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

377

ate with their colleagues and best serve their students; their replacements gave the faculty a more youthful character. New leadership appointees achieved closer cooperation among their teaching staffs. In the former Girls (now “A”) Schools, Greek philology teacher Panayiota (Toula) Georgiadou succeeded retiring Eleni Sgourou as lyceum director in 1986, while Lina Stefa ’53, English teacher, headed the gymnasium. Michaelis Nikolaou, who since 1977 had overseen the Boys (now “B”) Gymnasium, was joined in 1991 by fellow physics teacher Foivos Paraskevas as director of the “B” Lyceum. Legislation in the mid-1980s required every school to have an assistant director, with partial teaching duties, thereby increasing Anatolia’s administrative staff by four. The major challenge to the Greek directors was to gain the respect of their faculties and bolster teacher motivation to serve their students and achieve Anatolia’s highest ideals. Positive results included closer cooperation with secondary education officials. One consequence was Anatolia being allowed to initiate computer science instruction well before its inclusion in the standard curriculum. A key figure in coordinating the academic, extracurricular, and residential activities among the four schools, with a combined student body of nearly twelve hundred, was Vice President John Gateley, whose Greek and British heritage enhanced his administrative effectiveness across Anatolia’s broad cultural spectrum. It was in these years that a number of teachers realized their full potential. Science instructor Angelos Mastoroyiannis (1969–1996), assistant director of the “B” Gymnasium for several years, was honored following retirement by a laboratory being named for him. Chemistry teacher Nicholas Voulouvoutis was similarly honored in his field. The College had earlier recognized Sotiria Christoforidou’s inspiring instruction in home economics by giving her name to the corresponding classroom in Riggs Hall.63 A FLOURISHING CAMPUS CULTURE Among Anatolia’s foremost objectives was to assist its students not only to acquire knowledge but also to discover new interests and cultivate diverse talents. Preconditions for achieving such results included student enthusiasm and initiatives by faculty members able and willing to inspire their young charges. These additional pursuits competed with academic priorities and other demands for the time and energy of both teachers and students, especially in the case of seniors preparing for university entrance. Despite such constraints, the faculty achieved an impressive

378

Chapter 10

degree of participation in the school’s many clubs. By the mid-1990s, they oversaw more than fifty different pursuits, including a range of athletics.64 Major occasions every year were the Greek and English theater productions, competitions with other private schools in speech and debate, and athletic tournaments in basketball, volleyball, handball, and soccer. The Greek Theater Club, guided by Venetia Baglani-Efstathiou and Panayiotis Antoniou, presented a series of carefully staged classical and modern plays. The Drama Club’s annual production of a musical work (e.g., West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof) demanded weeks of preparation. Anatolia was fortunate over the years to have several educators with the talent and dedication to meet this challenge, most notably Alexandra Charanis, Christopher Markham, and Thomas Stone. The enthusiasm thus generated inspired many graduates to continue their efforts through productions staged by the Alumni Association’s Drama Club, while several Anatolians went on to careers in theater. The Pan-Hellenic Forensics Tournament, held in Thessaloniki and Athens in alternate years, drew students of several nationalities from schools in Greece and the Near East for English-language contests including oratory, duet acting, and formal debate. Among an impressive array of talent, including many native-English-speaking contestants, Anatolians frequently took the tournament trophy. Competition to join the team was intense, with 180 students vying for thirty-five places one year. Several teachers coached Anatolia’s players under the guidance of Patricia Atkins Kastritsis. One reason for the English mastery exhibited by Anatolians, ironically, was the legal restriction on entrance exams at foreign schools, permitting only a language test. Admissions rivalry thus raised the English proficiency of entering students, who often prepared for years.65 The Anatolia Chorale participated in events throughout Greece and abroad with a repertoire encompassing popular and traditional music. It took first place in a countrywide competition in 1996 and two years later traveled to Stockholm to perform on Swedish television on New Year’s Eve. The organizers of Thessaloniki’s celebration as the 1997 Cultural Capital of Europe designated Anatolia to organize Greece’s first European Youth Chorale with choirs from several countries joining the College’s singers, led by music teacher Sotiris Alevizos. Anatolia’s array of musical activities also included the student orchestra and guitar club. An impressive range of talent energized the annual Christmas concert with offerings ranging from Bach to bouzouki.66 As noted earlier, Anatolia was the first school in Greece to send student delegations to Model United Nations conferences organized in Western Europe. Though suspended during the politically volatile 1980s, MUN participation became increasingly popular the following decade as the event came to be hosted by schools in Greece. A special opportunity arose



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

379

in 1994 when Anatolia took part in an MUN session organized by Harvard University, returning to Boston for that event the following years. Positive experiences in forensics and MUN spurred Anatolia to embrace a new initiative designed to advance student understanding of the European Union. The European Youth Parliament (EYP) organized conferences where delegates deliberated about the prospects for a united Europe. An Anatolia delegation representing Greece at the first EYP session held in France in 1988 found the experience so inspiring that the College offered to host the November 1989 conference in Thessaloniki. Families of students extended the hospitality of their homes to over 150 visitors. The proceedings proved immensely engaging until the final day, when the West German delegation suddenly announced that the Berlin Wall had just fallen, their country was about to be reunited, and they were departing for home immediately. No one could have imagined such a dramatic conclusion! Anatolia took part in several more conventions, including those held in Prague in 1991 and Berlin in 1994. Alumni were instrumental in organizing a Greek EYP branch, which held a much expanded event in Thessaloniki in 1997 when the College hosted many of the sessions for delegates from twenty-one countries.67 Development of writing skills and reportorial awareness ranked high among extracurricular goals. Campus publications included the Greeklanguage newspaper, Student World, and literary journal, Dokimes (Experiments); the English-language newspaper, In Focus, and literary periodical, Pegasus; as well as The Anatolian yearbook. The Week of the Arts every spring provided club enthusiasts with the opportunity to present summations of their accomplishments in music, drama, and the visual arts. Similarly, the annual Field Day featured major athletic activities, while the Spring Cup tournament brought visiting teams for competition in basketball and volleyball. At major celebrations, the Greek Dance Club, garbed in a variety of regional costumes and guided by physical education teacher Aristi Antoniadou, performed traditional folk dances. Other clubs included painting, photography, computing, arts and crafts, ecology, poetry, psychology, folklore, astronomy, automobile, and many more. Summer experiences provided further opportunities for intellectual and cultural growth. A stream of Anatolians headed every year for six-week courses at the Massachusetts campus of Northfield Mount Hermon School with scholarships from the Frank and Antigone Raphael family. Another unique opportunity was provided by Camp Rising Sun in New York State, which brought participants from around the world, while designating Anatolia as its source for Greek campers with expenses paid.68

380

Chapter 10

An essential dimension of Anatolia’s mission was to assist the underprivileged while transmitting humanitarian values to its students. The school provided ongoing support for the neighboring St. Demetris Home for Handicapped Children. It also reached out to the Thessaloniki School for the Blind where Eva Kanellis, head of Anatolia’s External Academic Programs, organized English and computer instruction, enlisting the assistance of the famous Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts. One result was a scholarship awarded to a student from the Thessaloniki school who, with special instruction, earned his Anatolia diploma. These and other worthy causes were supported by income from the annual Christmas Bazaar, the Charity Run, and similar means.69 The Alumni Association pursued parallel objectives, frequently in collaboration with the College, including a series of seminars on learning disabilities. So as to achieve still closer rapport with its graduates, Anatolia in 1996 designated Morley House as a campus alumni center for class reunions and other events.70 The great variety of academic and extracurricular pursuits only partially described was designed to broaden and strengthen students’ intellectual, cultural, and athletic skills and thereby build their self-confidence. A question frequently posed for all educators concerns the true fruits of their endeavors. To what extent can they be confident that their efforts are properly conceived and directed and that they indeed prepare their charges for personal and professional achievement? A completely satisfactory answer is probably unattainable, although student success in later years should provide at least some indication. For Anatolia’s graduates, the field appears to have blossomed richly, far beyond the space available here to describe. The majority of alumni continued to be members of Thessaloniki’s middle class. Their high university entrance rate gave a large proportion access to the favored professions, especially medicine, law, education, engineering, architecture, banking, and commerce. Many took over the management of their family’s business. By contrast, relatively few seem to have aspired to careers in politics, agriculture, shipping, religion, or military service. An increasing number relocated to Athens, where the major Greek and international firms are situated, or were drawn to opportunities in other European Union countries. Though fewer than one in ten graduates pursued studies in the United States, their achievements across the Atlantic were impressive, as noted in chapter 9, which cites the success there of national scholars, who at that time were largely males. A small but indicative sampling of recent alumnae who realized exceptional accomplishments in American academia is presented in note 71. Far more instances could be cited of women and men from Anatolia who, competing in their second language in an



Fighting for Identity and Ideals (1974–1999)

381

adopted country, reached the top of their professions in the United States and Western Europe.71 Although the 1990s were a positive era for Anatolia, the decade also brought challenges. As competition for university entrance intensified, cram schools continued to proliferate, taking student time and attention away from school studies and activities. Private lessons by teachers outside school had similar results, while also raising ethical concerns. Although College faculty and parents were repeatedly cautioned that out-of-class instruction by teachers of their regularly assigned students was strictly forbidden, concerns persisted.72 An unforeseen development was the significant decline in the birthrate in Greece, as in much of Western Europe, which by the 1990s resulted in significantly reduced school enrollments. During the previous two decades, applications to Anatolia had more than doubled, reaching 560 in 1991 or more than three for every place, not counting the hundreds of scholarship applicants. The following years saw a decline, though applications remained about double the available places throughout the decade.73 THE INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE Anatolia had always endeavored both to meet the state’s curricular requirements and to provide further elements of contemporary learning. For the first time in the annals of Greek secondary education, Minister George Papandreou in 1995 succeeded in having legislation enacted authorizing an alternative to the mandated state program. Qualified schools were permitted to offer, in the last two years of the lyceum, the International Baccalaureate (IB), taught mostly in English. This course of studies, administered from Geneva, Switzerland, was designed to prepare students worldwide for admission to selective Western universities. Factors influencing the government’s action recognizing the IB as equivalent to the Greek high school diploma (apolitirion) included rising popular demand for English instruction, a heavy exodus of Greek students to foreign institutions, and the widespread esteem achieved by the IB. Following a careful appraisal of this optional curriculum, Anatolia became the first school in northern Greece to adopt it in 1998. Students electing to follow the IB in the junior and senior years advanced their mastery of English and enhanced their prospects for entering the more demanding universities abroad. Beginning with only twenty-five enrollees, numbers rose rapidly with transfers from other schools, adding to Anatolia participants. The major constraint was that the IB could not prepare students for Greek public university entrance and was therefore limited to those opting for alternative educational futures, usually abroad.

382

Chapter 10

The greatest merit of the new curriculum was its learning methods, emphasizing comprehensive knowledge and creative thinking. Moreover, students had no need for cram schools or private lessons. Even though only a portion of Anatolia’s students and teachers experienced it directly, in time the IB would come to exert a positive influence upon the entire secondary program, under the directorship of Theodore Filaretos. The two most significant innovations in Anatolia’s educational offerings during the last quarter of the twentieth century were the IB and the postsecondary initiative discussed in the following chapter.74 The culmination of every academic year is the June Commencement when over two hundred graduates, who have experienced the six most intensely maturing years of their lives, take leave of the College. In 1999 it was my privilege to bid farewell to Anatolia in the company of that year’s graduates, including my daughter Melina. Preparations for the occasion have always preoccupied the deans; graduating seniors had to be cautioned about facial hair and skirt length. But such concerns were forgotten when the magic moment arrived and departing seniors passed through the archways of Macedonia Hall to the applause of friends and relatives. The ceremony reached its zenith with their concluding oath: In departing from the College at this time, our conscience demands a pledge which will point the direction we intend our lives to take. We promise that we will enrich our knowledge and learning not for the objectives of glory or wealth or power, but rather in order to respect and protect the dignity of our fellow-man and woman, to improve society and to defend the honor and democracy of our country.

Anatolia’s most recent graduates then marched off in the direction of Mt. Olympus.

11

} Anatolia Returns to Higher Education (1981–1999)

T

hroughout its years in Greece, Anatolia entertained the prospect of resuming higher education, as the continued designation “college” in part implied. University-level instruction had been its principal focus in Asia Minor and would have continued in Greece had prevailing laws permitted. It was the liberal arts college typified by Carleton, Grinnell, Oberlin, and Williams that had served as Anatolia’s early model. While proud of its secondary school, which had come to be regarded as one of the country’s most outstanding, Anatolia’s leaders sought periodically to offer advanced studies. Ernest Riggs had espoused such an initiative immediately after the war, Howard Johnston had revived it in the 1960s, and a decade later a young American researcher was brought to explore the prospects for introducing training in business management. As with the earlier efforts, this last one failed to advance largely because of legal obstacles, particularly a clause in the country’s 1975 constitution assigning university education exclusively to state institutions.1 As the 1980s drew near, recent developments in Greek society seemed to signal greater promise for new departures in higher education. Three decades of peace and rising prosperity had created a growing middle class with a steadily increasing demand for advanced training, to which the state universities were slow to respond. Applications for university studies soared and acceptance rates declined sharply; in 1980 approximately 75,000 candidates vied for only 15,000 university places. It was observed as well that the public universities, conservatively attached to traditional curricula, were slow to adopt such contemporary disciplines as business management, computer science, or social studies. Consequently, 383

384

Chapter 11

tens of thousands of high school graduates were induced to seek further studies abroad, at considerable cost to their families and to the national economy. Many gravitated to neighboring Balkan countries where they were obliged to master languages of limited use elsewhere. In response to the growing demand, initiatives sprang up within Greece, mostly by entrepreneurs eager to profit from the new educational market by opening postsecondary academies of various kinds. Although the state would not recognize their diplomas, their graduates were usually able to find employment within the country’s expanding economy. These new enterprises based their legality on a 1935 decree allowing the operation of “Workshops of Free Studies,” for which no official permits were required.2 At Anatolia, quite different factors impelled renewed consideration of a venture into higher education. Foremost was the belief that the American liberal arts model offering comprehensive studies and intensive learning could serve Greek youth better than the narrow specialization and huge lecture classes of the public universities. Another was the College’s strength in teaching English, now by far the most sought-after foreign language in Greece and in high demand for professional training. The one-year Secretarial School, which had advanced significantly under director-teacher Patricia L. Malone (1972–1977), demonstrated the success of an English-language postsecondary initiative in drawing high school graduates. Yet another impetus was Greece’s membership in the European Union and its increasing involvement with Western European societies, a development seen to shape a more cosmopolitan outlook in the younger generation. No less important, Anatolia had endured increasing frustration in its efforts to escape the narrow strictures of the closely regulated secondary program. The provisions of the 1931 law allowing foreign schools broad latitude, especially as regards curriculum and foreign language instruction, had been steadily narrowed by later rulings. It seemed that the administration’s chief efforts for many years had concentrated on resisting steadily mounting pressures compelling all schools, public and private, to conform to a uniform model. New beginnings at the higher level would seem to afford greater freedom from the bureaucratically controlled academic culture, more flexible and creative offerings, and an opportunity for Anatolia to revitalize its mission in Greece. To be sure, many hurdles loomed with regard to committing Anatolia’s resources to such a venture. The first consideration was whether an initiative in higher education could transcend legal obstacles. The law allowing “Workshops of Free Studies,” despite its ambiguities, seemed to provide reasonable grounds for taking a tentative initiative, as attorney Vasilis Papademas counseled. Next, the trustees in Boston had to approve the



Anatolia Returns to Higher Education (1981–1999)

385

president’s proposal, which they readily did, backed by Anatolia’s Massachusetts charter authorizing it to award the full range of school and university degrees. The next moves were to organize and promote the new college while finding the material means to launch it.3 Anatolia’s School of Business Administration and Liberal Arts (SBALA), a two-year institution comparable to an American junior college, commenced in the fall of 1981. Given uncertainties about its legitimacy under Greek law and its appeal to a student clientele, the beginnings were necessarily modest. It seemed unwise to invest heavily in the new venture until its prospects became clearer. During its first years, therefore, SBALA used Anatolia’s high school classrooms in the late afternoon and evening after the secondary students had departed. A gift by trustee Ernest Chepou funded a well-equipped computer laboratory, while the EXXON and Raytheon Corporations and the Claremont Foundation made additional contributions to the new undertaking. Since admission was limited by the requirement of college-level proficiency in English, which relatively few young people in northern Greece could meet at that time, initial enrollment was only forty but grew steadily. By its fourth year, SBALA produced a surplus of revenues over expenses.4 The new venture was fortunate to secure as its director Dr. John Koliopoulos, professor at the University of Thessaloniki and one of Greece’s leading historians, who had trained in the United States and Great Britain. This accomplished educator assembled a select teaching staff, including Greek university faculty members willing to supplement their daytime duties with part-time teaching in the evenings. Dr. Alki Nestor ’53, a leading professor at the University of Thessaloniki, enhanced SBALA’s appeal by teaching an anthropology course and addressed the first graduating class in 1983. Several other Anatolia graduates with advanced degrees from the United States joined the new faculty. Although the goal was for Anatolia’s new venture into higher education to eventually become a full four-year college awarding the bachelor’s degree, limited resources and prudence enjoined a more cautious beginning. It was judged necessary first to sink roots and develop assets. However, the question quickly arose concerning the usefulness to its holders of a two-year diploma lacking any official endorsement. Accreditation in the United States remained a distant objective. Though some graduates found employment on the strength of their SBALA diploma, most aspired to a full university degree. A solution was soon found through agreements concluded with American universities admitting the holders of SBALA’s “Certificate of Studies” as bachelor’s degree candidates with advanced standing. The first graduates were thereby eligible for enrollment in the third year without entrance examinations at ten reputable American institutions, including

386

Chapter 11

Boston, New York, Pace, Temple, and Washington (St. Louis) Universities. This arrangement served many SBALA graduates well, although the high cost of stateside studies posed an obstacle for some. Only two years later, the number of cooperating institutions had expanded to seventeen, including state universities of Georgia, Ohio (Kent), Massachusetts, Minnesota (Duluth), South Carolina, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where tuition rates were lower. In some instances, financial assistance was forthcoming. Not a few graduates applied for and gained admission at other universities in the United States and Great Britain, while others completed their studies more affordably at Deree College or the University of La Verne, American-sponsored institutions in Athens. The top graduate of the first SBALA class (1983), Katerina Ioannou, won a scholarship to Yale University and continued for a master’s degree at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The first-ranking graduate in 1984, Sotiris Haritidis, an Anatolia high school alumnus, obtained the Bachelor of Business Administration degree from New York University. These early successes served to boost confidence in SBALA’s future.5 The “articulation agreements” just described came with conditions that bore consequences for SBALA’s academic program. When the curriculum was first being shaped, various formulas were considered, including early specialization in fields of popular demand such as business administration. However, the cooperating universities followed the prevailing American practice of requiring a broad range of studies in the arts and sciences during the first two years before selecting a major field in year three. SBALA was hence obliged to adopt this design rather than the common European pattern of concentration in a single subject area from the first year. My personal view, having experienced the liberal arts curriculum at Reed College, but also after observing the university experiences of Anatolia graduates, favored general education in the early years. The more mature student, having acquired a broad foundation of knowledge across several disciplines, should be better prepared to select the area of professional training that best corresponded to her or his inclinations and abilities. Its liberal arts curriculum served to distinguish SBALA from both the Greek state universities and the several competing “Workshops.” All students completed a core of required courses in the humanities and social sciences as well as mathematics, computer studies, and natural science. In designing a business administration option within the liberal arts framework, the prescriptions of the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business served as guidelines.6 From its first years, student enthusiasm and rising enrollment boosted confidence in SBALA’s prospects and encouraged new commitments to its expansion. An early goal was to end the awkward expedient of shar-



Anatolia Returns to Higher Education (1981–1999)

387

ing the secondary school’s classrooms. This was largely accomplished through a USAID/ASHA grant of $200,000 for the renovation of Compton Hall, no longer needed as a high school dormitory, to provide classrooms, offices, and a science laboratory beginning in the fall of 1984. The new college now had its own quarters, though they were less than adequate for realizing its full aspirations.7 It so happened that Anatolia launched its initiative in higher education just as the PASOK party gained authority and began its offensive against private schools. The new government brought charges against twentythree “Workshops,” challenging their legality, which, however, the courts upheld. Anatolia received a legal summons, and on two occasions I was called to the Thessaloniki police headquarters to make depositions, though no further action ensued.8 Paradoxically, the very fact that Greek law made no provision for private higher education, whereas the courts upheld the right of the “Workshops” to operate, protected the latter from excessive government interference. Since they remained unlicensed, hence unsupervised by the Education Ministry or any other public agency, they escaped the invasive controls imposed upon officially recognized schools and universities. During SBALA’s early years, this relative freedom outweighed the disadvantages of non-recognition, thus enabling it to evolve according to its best ability.9 SBALA’s purpose from the outset was to reproduce the outstanding features of liberal arts education together with the ideals they embodied. Its primary objectives were to cultivate a quest for knowledge, ethical values, and skills of analysis, synthesis, and expression. To facilitate intensive learning, class size was limited to a maximum of twenty-five, with the average under twenty. Students were encouraged to take initiatives through extensive reading, class discussion, research, and writing. Instructors gave high priority to the needs and potential of every individual with emphasis upon building self-confidence. Standards were sufficiently strict that fewer than half of the students were able to earn diplomas in only two years. As enrollment grew, reaching 226 by 1987, it began to include part-timers from state universities drawn by the opportunity to follow English-language courses but also to experience SBALA’s more personal teaching methods. A grant from the Thomas A. Pappas Foundation enabled the new college to award scholarships to able, but needy, applicants. The faculty embraced the challenge with inspired vigor. The required teaching skills were very different from those of the public universities with their large lecture classes, memorization of core texts, and limited personal contact between students and instructors. The several faculty members who also held positions at state institutions welcomed the

388

Chapter 11

adjustment to small classes and more personalized methods. They included such outstanding pedagogues as Dr. Athanasios Katos, professor of economics at the University of Macedonia. However, increasingly strict university regulations soon forbade these instructors from teaching at private colleges, necessitating the withdrawal of Dr. Koliopoulos, Dr. Katos, and others. While regretting their departure, SBALA in the meantime had planted firm roots and assembled a nucleus of full-time faculty wholly devoted to the new college. Most prominent were Anatolia high school graduates returning from advanced studies in the United State with experience in the liberal arts educational prototype. Although for most of the thirty-some alumni their alma mater’s new higher division provided only temporary employment until they were able to obtain public university appointments, several joined the evolving core of committed faculty.10 Anatolia’s venture into higher education was complemented by two other notable initiatives. As early as 1978, we had introduced summer instruction in Greek studies for American college students who resided on campus. Leading scholars, including archeologist Fotios Petsas, historian Richard Clogg, and anthropologist Peter Allen, came from Greek, British, and American universities to deliver six-week courses ranging from classical civilization to modern language and history and featuring field trips. The Summer Institute in Hellenic Studies continued until 1986, when violent events in the Mediterranean region deterred American student travel to Greece. The other foray into university-level scholarship was a series of summer conferences hosted in collaboration with the Modern Greek Studies Association (MGSA) and with support from the Fulbright Foundation. The first, on the topic of Modern Greek historiography, coincided with SBALA’s start-up in 1981. It was followed by the centennial symposium “Greece and Asia Minor.” The third, in 1989, explored the topic of “Migrations and Settlements in the Greek Lands since 1453.” All of the conferences resulted in academic publications. Through these and other activities, Anatolia brought to public attention its new higher educational dimension.11 The growing college faced the need for enlarged and better-equipped quarters. Again, USAID/ASHA responded to our appeal with a grant of $400,000 to remodel another former high school dormitory, Stephens Hall. The renovated facility adjacent to Compton Hall was ready to receive classes in the fall of 1991. This pair of buildings encompassed sixteen classrooms, seventeen offices for faculty and administrative personnel, two science laboratories and one for computers, a sizable lecture hall, an art studio, and a faculty lounge. It provided quarters for a student body of up to five hundred. It also accommodated Anatolia’s Secretarial School,



Anatolia Returns to Higher Education (1981–1999)

389

enabling it to vacate Kyrides Hall, upgrade its facilities, and form links with SBALA, where not a few of its graduates continued their studies. As SBALA approached the conclusion of its first decade, with a student body of over three hundred, a faculty numbering thirty-one, and growing public esteem, it addressed the long-envisioned ascent to a four-year college awarding the baccalaureate degree. That challenge went beyond providing facilities, resources, and high quality instruction, daunting as those requirements were. But the prospect of a full undergraduate curriculum raised once more the question of the validity of the degrees to be awarded. SBALA’s articulation agreements providing for transfer to the third year of U.S. universities would obviously be of no benefit for students who had completed four years of undergraduate training. Clearly the best possible solution was to win academic accreditation in the United States. Though not officially recognized in Greece, such endorsement would command esteem internationally and presumably strengthen prospects for public acceptance in Greece at such time as that should become feasible. In any event, it seemed to be the only accessible route to academic legitimacy for an American-based institution. However, the demanding requirements of U.S. regional accreditation would be a formidable challenge, particularly those of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) to which SBALA would be obliged to apply, given Anatolia’s incorporation in Massachusetts. The new college would thereby have to meet the same standards as many of America’s most prestigious institutions. With this as the goal, the trustees in 1990 approved our recommendation, based on a detailed plan, to introduce a third year in the fall of 1991 and a fourth the following September. The great majority of students completing the two-year program elected to continue for the full four years. Fields of concentration were initially limited to two: liberal arts and business administration. The first baccalaureate degrees, as yet unrecognized by any authority, were awarded to fifty graduates in June 1993. At the same time, SBALA changed its title, partly in response to shifting Greek legal requirements but also to signify its elevated standing. After experimenting with the designation “American College of Higher Studies” (ACHS) on an interim basis, in 1996 it was renamed the “American College of Thessaloniki” (ACT).12 The new college had sought advice from NEASC while still in its two-year phase. The process of applying for recognition as a four-year institution began by submitting in 1992 an application for Candidacy for Accreditation, (also termed “Affiliation”). Requirements for even this preliminary step were formidable for a small college situated abroad and with limited resources and experience. One early adaptation was

390

Chapter 11

the revision of Anatolia’s bylaws to provide for a separate trustee committee to oversee higher education. Another was for the president to concentrate his primary attention upon the new college while assigning day-to-day administration of the high school to the newly appointed vice president, Peter Nanos (1991–1994). The position of SBALA director was succeeded by that of academic dean. Deborah Brown Kazazis (Ph.D., Yale University) was promoted from English instructor to that post, joined by Dr. Anna Challenger as head of English training, Bill Blatsas of business studies and Dr. Panos Vlachos (future Anatolia president) of mathematics and computer science. A college council, composed of the chief academic officers and chaired by the president, met weekly to formulate academic policies, as did a separate team for administrative issues. The preparation of extensive reports followed by evaluation visits of NEASC personnel made heavy demands upon the small staff, particularly Dean Kazazis. On the other hand, the evaluators’ judicious methods for assessing academic quality proved to be an unanticipated boon. The standards mandated by NEASC corresponded so closely to ACT’s values and aspirations that they provided both a compass and a disciplinary tool. Moreover, the New England educators proved to be inspiring mentors during their inspection visits. Impressed by the devotion of the faculty and enthusiasm of the students, they readily provided guidance and encouragement. The director of NEASC’s Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, Dr. Charles Cook, had taken an interest in the new college’s progress in its first years when he accepted our invitation to visit. He returned frequently, while providing ongoing advice and reassurance. It was at his suggestion that Dr. William Young, from the University of Vermont, was engaged as a seasoned consultant on accreditation. Following the submission of an extensive Self-Study addressing all aspects of the college’s operation, and the subsequent visit by an evaluation team, Candidacy for Accreditation was approved in 1993, authorizing us to embark upon the final phase leading to full recognition. This steady progress owed much to the ongoing counsel of Dr. Julian Haynes, Anatolia trustee and experienced educator. Further encouragement came from an article published at this time by the well-known Chronicle of Higher Education portraying this unusual educational initiative in northern Greece.13 A NEW COLLEGE CAMPUS The steady growth of enrollment and mounting optimism for the future prompted higher ambitions. It had long been recognized that a selfsustaining higher college should have its own campus separate from the



Anatolia Returns to Higher Education (1981–1999)

391

secondary school. An ideal site beckoned: Anatolia’s eleven acres in the valley just to the north, mostly unused other than for occasional athletic matches. Indeed, concerns had arisen about the security of its ownership were the plot to remain undeveloped. This now became the target for the next stage of expansion, intended to provide the new college with space and facilities enabling it to realize the full extent of its capabilities. The architectural firm of Petros Makridis ’63 was selected to prepare a master plan for the new ACT campus, drawing upon the advice of a Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus planner, J. E. Robinson. It projected a complex of six structures, including two academic buildings, a performing arts theater/auditorium, library, administration hall, and gymnasium. The Makridis firm undertook to design the first building, situated directly below Compton and Stephens Halls and intended to accommodate most of ACT’s classes.14 USAID/ASHA once more responded to our overtures with grants totaling $1,400,000, about two-thirds of the total cost for the 2,845-squaremeter academic building and accompanying infrastructure for the new campus, encompassing roads, gardens, walkways, a parking area, and a gatehouse. The remainder was provided by private donations, including a contribution by the Friends of Anatolia for an imaginatively designed pedestrian overpass enabling teachers and students to negotiate the steep slope separating the upper campus from the new site. The three-story brick building, constructed by the firm of Vasilis Hatzitakis ’67, was inaugurated in October 1995 at a ceremony attended by the mayor of Thessaloniki, the American ambassador, and trustees from the United States and Greece.15 ACT’s new center provided sixteen classrooms, twelve faculty and administrative offices, a faculty meeting room, a conference area, a multimedia amphitheater, a computer laboratory, and a cafeteria with adjoining terrace. The large basement area was reserved for a bookstore to provide not only classroom texts but also a variety of resources for the student body and faculty. Following competitive bidding, its operation was assigned to a local firm, Promytheus. The bookstore became a favorite site for presentations by ACT faculty of their published works. A second computer lab provided in 1997 through the generosity of trustee William Drakos enabled students to develop proficiency in information technology. With the substantial beginnings of its own campus, ACT’s aspirations rose higher. The facilities now at its disposal, including Compton and Stephens Halls on the upper campus, were able to accommodate a future enrollment of over eight hundred, although the intention was to return those two buildings to the secondary school once the lower (north) campus had completed its expansion. The other premises still shared by ACT and the high school were the gymnasium and the relatively new (1989)

392

Chapter 11

Eleftheriades Library. The latter included a small but growing collection of works for the higher college. A grant of $300,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation enabled the library to adopt the most advanced practices. ACT had reached an important interim stage in its projected rise, though the ultimate goal was a fully separate campus independent of the high school, as envisioned by its master plan.16 THE ISSUE OF LEGAL RECOGNITION Its rapid expansion in enrollment, steadily improved academic quality, and the completion of the first building on its separate campus raised ACT’s public standing and self-esteem. However, the government’s denial of recognition constituted a major obstacle to winning the confidence of the Greek public. The legal designation “Workshop of Free Studies” not only implied inferior status but bore practical consequences. Greek males enrolled in such “Workshops” were refused military deferment, an established right at public universities, and subject to early conscription. Largely for this reason, women made up about two-thirds of ACT’s student body. Moreover, holders of private college diplomas were not admissible to Greek state universities to pursue advanced degrees. Applicants from abroad, particularly from neighboring Balkan countries, were frequently denied visas and residence permits. Furthermore, nonrecognition of private degrees greatly restricted ACT’s curriculum, given that Greek law limited entry to the most prestigious professions (law, medicine, engineering, architecture, etc.) to those holding state university degrees. The same held true for most public employment. The significance of this last limitation is illustrated by an OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) study that found that approximately 80 percent of Greek university graduates were employed in the public sector. This broad disqualification, reinforced by court rulings, not only deterred many potential applicants but also shaped and limited ACT’s curriculum. The major occupations that remained largely free of regulation were in the broad field of business management, which happened to be booming in Greece during these years, although the accounting profession was reserved to holders of public degrees. Despite ACT’s aspiration to provide the diverse curriculum of its liberal arts model, with several options for concentration in years three and four, the above limitations channeled student preferences into a narrow range of subjects likely to lead to employment, particularly business administration and computer science.



Anatolia Returns to Higher Education (1981–1999)

393

Non-recognition therefore created uncertainty about ACT’s future and acted as a constraint upon planning. Hopes for liberalization of the state universities’ monopoly on providing professional credentials rose in 1990 when the New Democracy government entertained reforms sanctioning postsecondary private instruction, subject to certain limitations. Unfortunately, ensuing political turmoil caused those proposals to be abandoned and the responsible minister of education to be replaced. The subsequent OECD evaluation of Greek education previously cited criticized sharply the quality of the public universities and recommended the legitimization of private higher education.17 ACT’s administration took what measures it could to cope with what were perceived to be outdated and discriminatory restrictions that could only be changed by governmental action. At a meeting secured with Prime Minister Constantinos Mitsotakis in 1992, John Koliopoulos and I presented arguments for an amendment to Article 16 of the constitution banning private education at the university level. Although the PM expressed some willingness to consider the issue, his government fell shortly after. Indeed, government leaders tended to be moving targets; according to the cited OECD study, the Ministry of Education changed leadership on an average of twice annually over a fifteen-year period. On the other hand, one obstacle to a fairer perspective toward private education was the reputation of most of the “Workshops of Free Studies” as for-profit outfits according higher priority to revenues than to quality.18 Anatolia endeavored to inform the public about its innovative educational offerings by all available means. One noteworthy opportunity was a symposium on the topic of higher education in Greece organized by the high school’s Alumni Association before a large audience. Joining me on the rostrum were Dr. Antonios Trakatellis, rector of the University of Thessaloniki, and Constantinos Karamanlis, a parliamentary deputy later to become prime minister. Overtures were also made to the U.S. Embassy where Ambassador Thomas Niles, having been approached by other “Workshops” with similar requests, advised that we form an association of nonprofit American institutions to convey our common concerns to the government and the Greek public. Accordingly, the Association of American Colleges in Greece (AACG) was founded in 1997, its membership including Deree College, the University of Indianapolis-Athens, the University of La Verne, the Dimitris Perrotis College of Agricultural Studies of the American Farm School, and the American School of Classical Studies as well as ACT. I was honored to be elected AACG’s first president. Over the following years, the group met periodically, often joined by a Ministry of Education representative assigned to hear our requests. Ambassador

394

Chapter 11

Niles, as well as his successor, R. Nicholas Burns, repeatedly urged the government to consider modifying its strict legal regime, which, however, would require nothing less than a constitutional amendment. Indeed, a proposal for the same came before the Parliament in 1998 but, unfortunately, did not receive the required vote.19 The issue of recognition in fact posed a dilemma for the private college. Any institution relegated to the status of “Workshop,” irrespective of its quality, could operate only at a severe disadvantage. On the other hand, years of experience left little doubt that official approval would be accompanied by such onerous bureaucratic interference as to outweigh the benefits. ACT remained free to pursue its academic goals unimpeded by such restrictions as burdened private secondary schools. Despite its many drawbacks, therefore, ACT’s ambiguous standing was preferable to any alternative under prevailing circumstances. Given those realities, the best strategy was to build an institution of such recognized worth and with such committed constituents―faculty, students, parents, alumni―that it would gain a kind of de facto legitimacy. One measure of success in this regard was the increasing number of applications, including many from Anatolia’s own high school graduates. This strategy remained valid throughout the 1980s and 1990s, so long as the demand for postsecondary studies far exceeded the capacity of the public universities, leaving tens of thousands of high school graduates in need of other solutions. Circumstances were to change later with the expansion of Greece’s state institutions.20 AN EVOLVING COLLEGE With its new campus and baccalaureate curriculum, ACT evolved rapidly. Although its 1990 development plan, assuming growth of 6 percent annually, had projected a student body of 700 by year 2000, that target was achieved three years earlier with total enrollment reaching 782 in the fall of 1998. Contributing to the increase was a mounting number of applications from outside Greece, representing seventeen countries and accounting for over one-fifth of the entering class. The largest number of foreign students came initially from the United States, usually for one or two semesters under ACT’s study abroad agreement with the College Consortium for International Studies (CCIS), whose membership included scores of institutions. This source came to be surpassed in the mid-1990s by enrollees from nearby Balkan countries, including the son of Albania’s prime minister. The broadening international dimension contributed to an increasingly cosmopolitan campus culture. ACT’s income, almost entirely from tuition, well exceeded direct expenses, enabling it to



Anatolia Returns to Higher Education (1981–1999)

395

make payment to the parent institution for overhead costs. But the most significant achievement was its impact upon young lives, as conveyed to the trustees at their October 1996 meeting by a graduate of the previous spring, Pindaros Demertzoglou: “I was working at a garage changing tires when I learned about ACT. I had no prior knowledge of English so I took a six-month crash course in English. I passed the TOEFL requirement and registered at ACT. Here I am four years later with a bachelor’s degree and a scholarship to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) to get a master’s degree in computers. Anatolia changed my life and I am forever grateful.” Demertzoglou continued for a Ph.D. and embarked on an academic career, becoming a professor of information systems at RPI.21 Expanding enrollment enabled ACT to further diversify its curriculum. Although over two-thirds of the student body elected to pursue business studies, new concentrations were introduced in humanities and social sciences, English language and literature, mathematics and computer science, psychology, history and international relations, and European business management. Ample provision was made for physical education, a class requirement for two semesters. Moreover, students were encouraged to participate in a variety of intramural athletics as well as in team competitions with other colleges from Thessaloniki, Athens, and abroad. ACT hosted an annual invitational tournament in basketball and soccer and also organized a separate Mt. Olympus climb for its students. Each such step in ACT’s progress, designed to duplicate the outstanding features of liberal arts colleges, followed a careful appraisal of the evolving Greek educational scene. The underlying rationale was perhaps best stated in the Self-Study submitted to NEASC in support of its bid for accreditation: Another important reason for ACT’s belief that liberal education holds a special relevance for Greece is the generally acknowledged crisis that Greek society is facing today and will likely continue to confront for the foreseeable future, a crisis of a social, political and economic nature whose roots involve ethical and cultural issues of tremendous complexity. Future leaders who must grapple with these problems will require an awareness and breadth of vision that far transcends the boundaries of parochial and specialized training. ACT’s intent is to train its students to become disciplined and independent thinkers possessing comprehensive cultural literacy and pragmatic management skills.22

The rare opportunity to shape a new collegiate institution from its very beginning posed an inspiring challenge to all those involved. Among the most significant developments was a steadily enhanced role for the faculty. The model was a faculty senate responsible for making academic policies and participating in college governance. This goal not only

396

Chapter 11

corresponded to a leading feature of the liberal arts college but also met an accreditation standard. However, given the youth of most of the instructors and their limited experience with governing practices, as well as the absence of local prototypes, this could only be a gradual process. Another constraint was the relatively few full-time members, numbering only twenty among a total faculty of seventy-three by 1997, although their proportion increased with new appointments. Major steps included the formation of the Faculty Advisory Committee, elected by the teaching staff, with its own bylaws, faculty manual and a growing range of responsibilities. The Faculty Development Committee organized workshops to better acquaint instructors with the principles and methods of liberal arts training. The expectation was that a steadily maturing faculty with strong loyalty to the institution would gain the experience and confidence to enable it to assume ever greater responsibilities.23 ACT’s highest priorities stressed rigorous academic standards. Class attendance was compulsory, by contrast to the public universities. Poor performance resulted in probation and, if not corrected, dismissal, as occurred in scores of cases. At the same time, vigorous efforts were made to encourage initiative and build self-confidence. Every student was assigned an academic counselor from among the faculty. Also, students prepared evaluations of their courses and instructors for review by the ACT administration. An important initiative was the Writing Center designed by Anna Challenger to assist second-language learners in improving their English skills. No less significant were measures initiated by Dr. Challenger to ensure high standards of integrity throughout the ACT community, the ambitious objective being to eventually establish a formal honor system. In seeking to build an institutional culture true to the liberal arts tradition, ACT assigned high value to extracurricular experiences, as essential complements to classroom learning. The Student Activities Office engaged faculty and administrative staff to oversee a range of pursuits, foremost of which was an enthusiastic student council. Other activities included drama, dance, instrumental music, photography, ecology, a student newspaper titled On Campus, a chorale that performed for commencement and other occasions, a yearbook, and group excursions with faculty. An alumni association was formed in 1995 with Kostas Ekatos as its first president. The Business Liaison/Career Services Office linked ACT with the business world by developing contacts with firms, advising students about résumé preparation and interview techniques, and assisting graduates to find employment or internships. In 1995 the office organized an annual Careers Week that brought commercial representatives to counsel students and alumni about employment prospects and, in many cases, make direct



Anatolia Returns to Higher Education (1981–1999)

397

job offers. ACT hosted a two-day convention of the Greek Management Association, drawing to campus 170 representatives of business firms. A graduate education adviser provided counsel about postgraduate studies and assisted senior students to prepare applications. Holders of the ACT (or ACHS) bachelor’s degree won admission to a range of American universities for advanced training, although the general preference was for Great Britain, where costs were lower and a master’s degree in most fields required only one year. As of 1995, alumni had embarked upon postgraduate studies at thirty-four British universities.24 To enhance ACT’s stature in the academic world, faculty members were encouraged to undertake research, publish their findings, and participate in scholarly conferences. A singular innovation designed to make ACT better known throughout academia was The Journal of Liberal Arts, a publication edited by Dean Kazazis. Its two annual issues found a readership within Greece and abroad. The Liberal Arts Colloquium, also an initiative of Dean Kazazis, provided a campus forum where instructors presented original papers for commentary by colleagues. When Thessaloniki celebrated its designation as the Cultural Capital of Europe In 1997, ACT, in collaboration with scholarly organizations from the United States and Greece, organized a conference on the subject, “NATO and the European Union: Confronting the Challenges of European Security Cooperation.” Scholars from nine countries, including Russia, Serbia, and Croatia as well as Greece and the United States, presented papers that were later published.25 ACT’s rapid growth raised expectations for its future while reinforcing the need for planning and financial strategies encompassing all of Anatolia’s operations. Accordingly, the administration prepared a long-range proposal in 1997 outlining targets for a new fundraising campaign. In recommending steps toward completion of the north campus as projected by ACT’s master plan, the proposal assigned top priority to a multipurpose theater/auditorium for which an architectural design had been prepared. The rationale was to meet ACT’s need for an auditorium but also serve the wider Anatolia community, including the secondary school with its many activities drawing huge audiences, while generating revenues from rentals. This reasoning also reflected caution about future enrollment given the current expansion of Greece’s public universities, prompting reservations about investing heavily in facilities serving ACT exclusively until its prospects could be better ascertained. The proposal therefore recommended that the second and third priorities under the master plan, namely, another academic building and a library, be postponed for further review after three years. However, the trustees elected to adopt both the theater/auditorium and the library as goals, with priority accorded to the latter.26

398

Chapter 11

ADVENTURES IN ACCREDITATION Having achieved “Candidacy,” ACT’s concluding move toward full accreditation was to undergo a final evaluation. Although NEASC’s rules allowed up to six years, we resolved to complete the process in four. The required steps included an updated Self-Study, followed by an interim inspection in 1995 and a comprehensive evaluation by a third visiting team in the fall of 1997. The purpose of this elaborative exercise was to determine whether ACT successfully fulfilled a valid educational mission according to established standards and fully met its obligations to its students and the general public. Once again, ACT’s faculty won the confidence, first, of the 1995 evaluator, Dr. Malcolm Forbes, and again, in 1997, of the five-member team whose chairman, Dr. Joseph Short, president of Bradford College in Massachusetts, provided strong encouragement. Their positive findings were relayed to NEASC‘s Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, which was responsible for submitting its recommendation to the NEASC board. Especially gratifying was the 1997 team’s response to the standard concerning integrity: “Truthfulness, clarity and fairness aptly characterize the internal and external relationships of ACT. This is a tribute to the leadership of ACT over many years. There is a commendable preoccupation with values and ethics which may well become one of the most important contributions and legacies of ACT.” Hence, it was with optimistic anticipation that I traveled to Massachusetts to attend the Commission’s deliberations in March 1998.27 Both surprise and dismay ensued when the commission’s review committee, despite the visiting team’s positive recommendation, found that ACT had not succeeded in fully meeting the requirements for accreditation. Its major concern pertained to NEASC’s standards on Organization and Governance and Financial Resources, finding that Anatolia’s institutional restructuring had not advanced far enough to accord ACT sufficient autonomy from the secondary school, especially as regarded financial oversight. It objected particularly to the Anatolia Board’s unwillingness, for reasons of cost, to authorize separate audits for those two units. Less severe reservations were expressed about a number of other features of the evolving college, including the adequacy of its library resources.28 Commission director Charles Cook, who had developed a close familiarity with ACT, clearly shared our disappointment. He tactfully suggested a procedure for appealing the committee’s findings before they were submitted to the NEASC board for its decision. If successful, a “show cause” appeal could reverse the negative recommendation and enable ACT to reach its goal in a matter of months, rather than delaying the process for at least two more years. A favorable result was of particular importance to me, since the last thing I wanted to do upon reaching



Anatolia Returns to Higher Education (1981–1999)

399

retirement age a year hence with the completion of twenty-five years at Anatolia’s helm was to leave an unmet accreditation challenge on the doorstep of a new president. The trustees fully shared these concerns. Our appeal was able to cite new measures by the Board to address the commission’s reservations. The most significant was an amendment to Anatolia’s bylaws strengthening the authority of the trustees’ ACT Governing Committee to oversee higher education as an autonomous operation and providing for separate audits for ACT and the high school. At the same time, the Board elected to proceed directly toward construction of a new library on ACT’s evolving campus, following the extraordinary pledge by Chairman George Bissell of a personal gift of $2.5 million toward that purpose.29 The meeting to hear our appeal took place in Boston the following September. Joining me to represent ACT were Board Chairman George Bissell; trustee Carroll Brewster, former president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges; and Academic Dean Deborah Brown Kazazis. The NEASC committee’s composition differed on this occasion from the previous meeting, including notably members of the evaluation teams that had visited ACT. The ensuing discussion proved most positive as the committee allowed us full rein to present the recent measures taken to meet NEASC requirements. The result was a reversal of the earlier finding and a positive recommendation subsequently endorsed by the NEASC Board. The participation of Anatolia’s two trustees weighed heavily. As one of the committee members later confided, Carroll Brewster’s declaration that Anatolia College represented, after his family, the most important pursuit in his life, resounded strongly. ACT had finally achieved academic endorsement as one of only two baccalaureate-degree colleges in Greece independently accredited in the United States, and the sole one in the country’s northern provinces.30 ACT’S EXPANDING CAMPUS: THE BISSELL LIBRARY Board Chairman George Bissell’s initiative in pledging a major gift for a new library ensured the continued expansion of ACT’s new campus while strengthening its bid for accreditation. The Boston firm of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbot provided an architectural scheme partially revised by Petros Makridis and Associates, who had prepared the master plan for the north campus. It projected a three-story steel, limestone, and glass structure of 4,845 square meters with the capacity to house up to 100,000 volumes as well as providing reading areas, classrooms, computer labs, and faculty and administrative offices. The new facility incorporated the most advanced features of contemporary library technology,

400

Chapter 11

including multimedia resources. With an estimated price for construction and furnishings in excess of $8 million, it was the most ambitious structure undertaken at Anatolia. By vote of the trustees, this striking addition to the ACT campus was named in honor of George Bissell, whose financial contribution, ultimately reaching over $3 million, was the largest ever received from an Anatolia trustee. Following a groundbreaking ceremony in May 2000, the new library was ready to serve the academic community in the fall of 2002.31 Paralleling this boost to ACT’s fortunes was the establishment of the Michael S. Dukakis Chair in Public Policy and Service honoring the eminent American political leader of Greek descent, former governor of Massachusetts and longtime friend of Anatolia. A fundraising banquet in Boston in March 1998 was followed by an inauguration on campus of ACT’s first endowed faculty chair in September of the following year. Governor Dukakis spoke at both events, joined by U.S. Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns, Chairman Bissell, and, on the latter occasion, Anatolia’s recently appointed president, Richard L. Jackson.32 In less than two decades, ACT had evolved from an experimental offshoot of the high school to become a stand-alone institution holding the highest academic recognition. Its expanded enrollment, stateside accreditation, growth of its campus with the addition of a library building any university would envy, Dukakis Chair, and, not least of all, positive spirit of its student body and faculty, inspired confidence and optimism on the part of the administration and trustees. Free of the many hindrances encumbering the high school and able to pursue the highest academic goals, ACT appeared to have a truly promising future. Given such encouraging circumstances, its core vulnerability was easily overlooked, namely, an insecure legal status and non-recognition of its degrees by the Greek government, with all that this implied for ACT and its graduates. The public universities’ incapacity to absorb more than a fraction of applicants had largely compensated for this Achilles’ heel during the new college’s first decade. However, changing circumstances became apparent from the mid-1990s following measures by the Ministry of Education to expand the state’s higher education institutions. Aided by European Union funding, the Ministry upgraded technical colleges to university status, established new departments with a greater variety of concentrations, and opened new branches in provincial towns. Such measures extended university training to a growing number of applicants, giving them access to professional credentials that private colleges were unauthorized to provide. The stated goal was open admissions for all high school graduates. If putting private colleges out of business was not an explicit objective of the Ministry’s new strategy, it was surely among



Anatolia Returns to Higher Education (1981–1999)

401

the anticipated results. One certain consequence of the rapid expansion was to seriously weaken the quality of Greece’s public university education for the foreseeable future.33 ACT accordingly saw its applications from Greek high school graduates begin to level off from the late 1990s. One contributing factor was the demographic decline in the teenage population as a result of a steadily falling birthrate. Another was increased competition from other private colleges, mostly for-profit outfits endorsed by British universities and requiring only three years for their degrees. As a consequence, ACT’s student body reached its peak of nearly eight hundred just before the close of the century. Reduced enrollment would bear heavy consequences, given the institution’s dependence upon tuition income. An additional financial constraint resulted from the declining availability of USAID/ ASHA grants that had brought ACT a total of $2,650,000 for developing its campus. Moreover, its own endowment, apart from that of the high school, remained minuscule. Given these circumstances, the reassessment of future prospects and the adoption of corresponding strategies would prove imperative in order to sustain Anatolia’s bold venture into higher education.34

Epilogue (1999–2014)

T

he essential preconditions for Anatolia’s successful operation continued for the most part to prevail during the following years. Although the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 posed a serious irritant to GreekAmerican relations, it soon passed. Richard L. Jackson exercised responsibilities as Anatolia’s tenth president for a full decade. Having completed a successful U.S. diplomatic career including assignments in Thessaloniki and Athens, this Princeton University graduate brought international experience and knowledge of the Greek language to the task of overseeing an institution that had expanded in size and range of offerings. The following years saw still further initiatives. Most significant was a successful venture into elementary education through the acquisition of the Rhigas Ferraios School adjoining Anatolia. The six-year primary school was subsequently relocated partly in the renovated campus building vacated by Pinewood and partly in a nearby facility acquired from another school. A kindergarten held classes in the remodeled Willard Hall. Anatolia’s high school expanded its facilities through a new annex to Ingle Hall, providing ten classrooms as well as a gymnastics area and faculty offices. The Raphael Hall auditorium was remodeled to become a handsome performing arts center, while science labs and athletic facilities were upgraded. The American College of Thessaloniki broadened its academic range by initiating postgraduate instruction leading to the Master of Business Administration (MBA), which also received accreditation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. In order to have its degrees 403

404

Epilogue (1999–2014)

validated in Europe, ACT concluded articulation agreements first with the University of Wales, and later with London’s Open University. Under new Greek legislation designed to meet EU legal requirements, ACT received official licensing as a postsecondary institution, though its degrees continued to be denied university-level recognition. The Bissell Library, completed in 2002, provided a broad range of learning facilities, including a computer technology center sponsored by the Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation. George Bissell, after fifteen years as Board chair, was succeeded in 2007 by long-serving trustee John “Jack” Clymer. In 2009 Dr. Hans Giesecke, with educational experience in the United States and Germany, assumed Anatolia’s leadership for a three-year term that happened to coincide with the first years of an extended crisis in the Greek economy. Upon his departure, Dr. Panos Vlachos in 2012 became Anatolia’s first Greek president. Holding a Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island, he had joined ACT as instructor of applied mathematics and over two decades won promotions to the posts of dean of faculty, provost, and vice president. An early accomplishment of his presidency was Anatolia’s designation by Johns Hopkins University to organize a Greek branch of its renowned Center for Talented Youth. Dr. Vlachos assumed executive responsibility for an institution which, though incorporated in the United States and overseen by a Board of Trustees based in Boston, no longer included Americans in its senior educational administration. The high school had replaced its last American vice president when Panayiota Georgiadou, after sterling service as teacher and director of the “A” lyceum, was assigned to that post in 2004. When evaluating the many changes in the educational offerings, personnel, and physical resources at Anatolia over the years against the background of a steadily evolving society, one would do well to recall the words of Carl Compton who devoted his professional life to Anatolia. At a gathering in his honor in 1969 when the former Alumni Hall was given his name, he responded: Buildings are important, but if one is outgrown or destroyed, another is built in its place. More important than the buildings are the teachers and the students, but they too come and go. More important than buildings and more important than individuals is a continuing unity of ideals and purposes handed down from one college generation to the next. This depends not upon buildings, and not even upon any few individuals, but is built up over the years by all who share in the life and work of the school.1

In concluding this account of challenges and accomplishments over more than twelve decades and spanning three centuries, Carl Compton’s words seem to offer the soundest counsel for Anatolia’s future.

New Pylea campus occupied by Anatolia in 1934. City of Thessaloniki and Thermaic Gulf to far left.

First building on Pylea site serving as workshop, storage area, and temporary residence.

Macedonia Hall, the first academic building on the Pylea campus.

Minnesota (later Everett and Mary Stephens) Hall, the first boys dormitory on the Pylea campus, subsequently remodeled for classrooms and offices.

Alumni (later Carl C. Compton) Hall, the first boys refectory on the Pylea campus, subsequently remodeled for classrooms and offices. Foreground: sundial with plaque honoring Lucas P. Kyrides, class of 1902, distinguished scientist and benefactor.

Boys School class of 1939. In second row, fifth from left, is President Ernest Riggs; fourth from left is Dean Carl Compton.

Greek nurses and soldiers in front of Minnesota (later Stephens) Hall serving as a military hospital 1940–1941.

General George Tsolakoglou, commander of the Greek Third Army Corps, arrives April 23, 1941, at the Anatolia campus, occupied by Nazi troops, before joining German and Italian officers at the neighboring Heitmann villa to sign an armistice. Credit: Vasos P. Mathiopoulos [Illustrations from the Occupation]. 4th ed., Athens: Ermis, 2006. Photos originally from the German Federal Archives.

Young students in a 1946 physical education class next to wartime structures converted temporarily for school use.

Anatolia campus in late 1940s. Quonset huts left by postwar British troops in lower right corner.

Ernest W. Riggs, president of Anatolia College 1933–1950.

Senior Boys School staff relaxing on the steps of Macedonia Hall in the late 1940s. From left: President Ernest Riggs, Orestes Iatrides, Prodromos Ebeoglou, and Carl Compton.

View of campus from the east in early 1950s.

Anatolia student committee at the 1954 opening of a new school in the village of Mavrorachi to which Anatolia students had contributed, one of several projects to aid the war-stricken village.

Staff and friends in the late 1950s in front of the plaque honoring Elsie H. White for planting the campus gardens. Ruth and Carl Compton are seated on either side of the plaque. Next to Ruth are Alice S. Riggs and librarian Theano Tiriki ’31. Seated below Ruth is administrator Stratos Paraskeviades ’30. Standing at far right is building supervisor Lazaros Amarantides.

Mary Ingle, dean of the Girls School 1945–1965.

Students performing traditional Greek dances in the mid-1950s on girls campus. In background, Riggs Hall to left and White Hall.

Girls performing May Day exercises before families and friends in 1955.

Demetrios Karademos, physics teacher and department head (1953–1975) with physics class.

President Howard Johnston, right, with trustee and famed cardiologist Paul Dudley White strolling south of the Girls School in 1961.

President Robert Hayden welcomes King Constantine and Queen Anna Maria to Field Day athletic exercises, May 1966.

George Beyiazis ’72, center, awarded an Anatolia National Scholarship upon completing elementary school in the village of Porpi, near Komotini in Western Thrace, lunching with his family, 1965.

President Robert Hayden presenting the Distinguished Alumni Award to Dr. Lucas P. Kyrides, joined by Stavros Constantinides ’47, later trustee.

Anatolia’s senior administrators, 1972. Seated: Girls School Dean Margarita Falari and Boys School Dean Ioannis Paparallis. Standing, from left: Business Manager Byron Alexiades ’53, President Joseph Kennedy, Vice President Gail Schoppert, Director of Student Services Donald De Paul.

Girls Academic Awards, 1972. In second row, Vice President Gail Schoppert, Girls School Dean Margarita Falari, and Vice-Dean Eleni Sgourou.

Cypriot students arriving at Anatolia, September 1974. Next to President William McGrew in the front is Helen Tavantzis, director of girls dormitory. Aristides Kyriakakis, director of boys dormitory, is at far left.

Students between classes in front of Macedonia Hall, 1974.

Students working on a Saturday to plant trees on the campus slopes.

Student athletes with trophy.

Volleyball team with boys athletics teacher-coaches Antonis Doukas, left, and Georgios Kasapides, right, 1975.

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed by the student Drama Club.

New gym completed in 1975.

Anatolia Vice President George Draper, far left, with visiting trustees, 1978. Front row from right: Chairman Edmund Gullion, Thomas Johnson, Everett Stephens; back row from right: C. Duncan Fraser, Norman Landstrom, and Curtis Lamb.

Anatolia high school graduation ceremony, 1979.

Biology teacher Angelos Mastoroyiannis instructs a laboratory class.

Governor Michael Dukakis at his office in Boston honors Anatolia’s centennial year (1986) by declaring “Anatolia College Day” in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Behind the governor are trustee Alki Kyriakidou-Nestor ’53, Trustee Chairman Edmund Gullion, and President McGrew.

Trustee Chairman Julian Haynes, center, Minister of Northern Greece Stelios Papathemelis, right, and U.S. Consul General Donald Bramante, far left, lay the cornerstone for Anatolia’s new library, 1987.

The new Anatolia library opened in 1989 and was subsequently named the Eleftheriades Library.

Patricia Kastritsis, head librarian, English teacher, and forensics coordinator.

Anatolia seniors celebrate reaching the summit (Mitikas) of Mt. Olympus, with teacherguides Stergios Stamoulas, center right, and Panayiotis Antoniou, center left.

The Anatolia Parents Association, led by its president Petros Apostolides ’54 (later trustee), demonstrate against proposed legislation restricting private schools (subsequently withdrawn), 1988.

Michaelis Nikolaou, science teacher and director of the Boys (“B”) Gymnasium (junior high school), 1977–1998.

Foivos Paraskevas, physics teacher and director of the “B” Lyceum, 1991–2001.

Bill McGrew greets George W. Bush during the U.S. President’s visit to Athens, July 1991.

Dimitris Zannas ’38, prominent lawyer and trustee, addresses graduating students.

Teresa Kassilian-Platidou, physical education instructor and dormitory counselor.

Guest pianist Maria Xifilidou ’75, right, greeted before her performance by Dr. Olympia Tziampiri, president of the Friends of Anatolia Association, far left, 1990.

Thessaloniki Mayor Constantine Kosmopoulos, right, guest speaker at a Friends of Anatolia Association banquet in 1992, with Titika Vouloni McGrew ’61 and the association president, Vasilis Takas ’69.

Friends of Anatolia Association President Fofo Engonopoulou-Karalia ’53 welcomes visiting trustees to a banquet in their honor, 1994.

Members of the Friends of Anatolia Association at fundraising dinner in Ingle Hall, 1998. President of association, Elena Tousi, at far left.

Anatolia Delegation to the European Youth Parliament in Berlin, holding the EU flag. Vice President John Gateley at top left, 1994.

White (above) and Riggs Halls, before and after the 1990s renovation of the “A” (formerly Girls) School buildings.

English teachers Alice Eppinga, left, and Eleni (Lina) Stefa ’53, also director of “A” Gymnasium (junior high school).

Panayiota (Toula) GourasaGeorgiadou, Greek philology teacher (1967–2003), “A” Lyceum director, and vice president (2004–2007).

Church of the Three Hierarchs, built in 1997, overlooks the campus from a knoll on its eastern fringe

Anatolia Chorale directed by music teacher Sotiris Alevisos performs in the annual Christmas concert, 1998.

Student folk dance team, directed by physical education teacher Aristi LeonidouAntoniadou, far right, about to perform for distinguished visitor Tipper Gore, fifth from left, 1999.

Dr. John Koliopoulos, first director of Anatolia’s School of Business Administration and Liberal Arts (SBALA).

Dr. Deborah Brown Kazazis, academic dean of the American College of Thessaloniki (ACT).

The first building on the new campus of Anatolia’s American College of Thessaloniki, 1995.

Trustee Angelos Billis ’47 presents a commencement award to an ACT graduate.

Richard Jackson, Anatolia’s tenth president (1999–2009) with Mrs. Eia Jackson.

Trustee Chairman George Bissell speaking at the inauguration of ACT’s new Bissell Library, 2002.

Trustee Chairman John (Jack) Clymer, 2007–.

Dr. Hans Giesecke, Anatolia’s eleventh president, 2009–2012.

Dr. Panos Vlachos, Anatolia’s twelfth president, 2012–.

Thessaloniki’s waterfront seen from the west with the city’s White Tower landmark in the left foreground, c. 2000. Photo by Heinz Troll.

} Appendix A Major Anatolia College Dates

1810 1831 1840 1863 1865 1881 1886 1890 1893 1894 1895 1899 1910 1914 1915 1916 1918

American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) founded. ABCFM establishes its first permanent mission station in Ottoman Empire. Cyrus Hamlin founds Bebek Seminary near Constantinople. ABCFM establishes a missionary station at Marsovan. Theological Seminary and Girls School move to Marsovan. Harbinger High School begins in Marsovan. Anatolia College succeeds high school with Charles Tracy as first president. George Herrick appointed Anatolia president. Girls School building burned; Tracy resumes presidency. Anatolia incorporated in commonwealth of Massachusetts. Widespread massacres of Armenians. Ottoman government legitimizes Anatolia by imperial decree. Martha A. King Memorial School for the Deaf established. George White appointed third president; Turkey enters war as German ally. Deportation and massacres of Armenians; Charlotte Willard and Frances Gage rescue Anatolia girls. Anatolia closed by order of Ottoman government; Turkish troops occupy campus. Ottoman government surrenders; Armistice of Mudros.

405

406

1919

Appendix A

Near East Relief unit reaches Marsovan (Merzifon); George White reopens Anatolia. 1921 Anatolia again closed by order of Turkish government; execution of Anatolia teachers and students. 1923 Treaty of Lausanne mandates minority population exchange between Greece and Turkey. 1924 Anatolia reopens in Harilaou, Thessaloniki. 1925 Greek government issues operating permit to Anatolia. 1926 Anatolia acquires site for new campus near Pylea. 1927 Girls School at Allatini (Sophouli) joins Anatolia. 1931 Anatolia recognized as equivalent to Greek private high school. 1933 Ernest Riggs succeeds George White as president. 1934 Anatolia Boys School relocates to Pylea campus. 1940 College closes as Italians invade Greece; Greek military organizes hospital on Pylea campus. 1941 German army invades Greece and occupies campus. 1942 Koraïs School founded by former Anatolia teachers. 1944 British troops occupy campus upon German withdrawal. 1945 Anatolia reopens with Girls School relocated on Pylea campus. 1946–1949 Greek civil war. 1950 Carl Compton becomes Anatolia’s fifth president. 1953–1957 White, Riggs, and Ingle Halls completed for Girls School. 1958 Howard Johnston becomes Anatolia’s sixth president. 1961 Kyrides Hall constructed. 1964 Ladas Hall dedicated; Anatolia Secretarial School established; Robert Hayden becomes Anatolia’s seventh president. 1967 Greek Junta seizes power. 1972 Joseph Kennedy becomes Anatolia’s eighth president. 1974 Democracy replaces Junta; William McGrew becomes Anatolia’s ninth president; arrival of Cypriot refugee students. 1975 New athletics building completed. 1978 Earthquake victims take shelter at Anatolia. 1981 School of Business Administration and Liberal Arts (SBALA) Founded. 1986 Anatolia celebrates its Centennial; completes transition to coeducation. 1989 New library completed (later named Eleftheriades Library). 1991 SBALA becomes a four-year college (ACHS); later renamed the American College of Thessaloniki (ACT). 1993 Construction of Phanos and Antigone Raphael Hall. 1996 ACT classroom building completed.



1998 1999 2002 2004 2009 2012

Major Anatolia College Dates

407

High school adopts International Baccalaureate curriculum; ACT accredited by New England Association of Schools and Colleges. Richard Jackson becomes Anatolia’s tenth president. George Bissell Library established at ACT. Anatolia Elementary School founded. Hans Giesecke becomes Anatolia’s eleventh president. Panos Vlachos becomes Anatolia’s twelfth president.

} Appendix B Anatolia College Hymn

Morning Cometh Words by President Charles Tracy Music by Professor A. D. Daghlian Morning cometh, morning cometh, Night shades and terrors pale, Morning cometh, morning cometh, All hail! Sweet light, all hail! Swift comes the dawn with rosy ray. The gloomy shadows flee away, The gloomy shadows flee away, Let sadness with the night depart, Let joy and peace fill every heart; Come one, come all a cheerful throng! Greet Alma Mater with a song! Anatolia! Anatolia! Long be thy gladsome day. Anatolia for ever! Anatolia for aye! Morning cometh, morning cometh, Arise! and greet the day. Morning cometh, morning cometh, Come join the joyful lay! 409

410

Appendix B

Swift comes the dawn with rosy ray. The gloomy shadows flee away, The gloomy shadows flee away, It is the day so long and bright; It is the dawn of love and light; Now joyful hope each bosom thrills And morning dances o’er the hills. Anatolia! Anatolia! Long be they gladsome day. Anatolia for ever! Anatolia for aye! Morning cometh, morning cometh, The heavenly heralds say. Morning cometh, morning cometh, Up! meet the King of day! O Light divine, rejoice our eyes! O Sun of Righteousness, arise! O Sun of Righteousness, arise! Send the swift wing thy healing beam O’er hill and valley, plain and stream, Till ’neath thy reign, from shore to shore, Woe, night and sin shall be no more. Anatolia! Anatolia! Long be they gladsome day. Anatolia for ever! Anatolia for aye!

} Notes

INTRODUCTION 1.  George E. White, Adventuring with Anatolia College (Grinnell, Iowa: HeraldRegister Publishing Co., 1940), p. 20. 2.  Harvard University, Houghton Library, Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (hereafter ABC), 16.9.3., v. I, binder 758, doc. 312. 3.  ABC 16.9.1., New Series, v. I, supp. v. II, doc. 62. 4.  Carl C. Compton, The Morning Cometh: 45 Years with Anatolia College, eds. John O. Iatrides and William R. Compton. (New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1986), p. 101.

CHAPTER 1 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT IN TURKEY AND THE FOUNDING OF ANATOLIA COLLEGE (1810–1886) 1.  Rev. Edward Riggs, “A Busy Summer in Marsovan,” August 1889, in Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (henceforth ABC) 16.9.3., vol. 10. 2.  For the founding and organization of ABCFM, Missionary Herald, containing the Proceedings at large of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, with a general view of Other Benevolent Operations (henceforth, M. H.) 22 (Boston, 1826), 89–92, 122–26; 26 (1830), 4–5. For the 1812 Act of Incorporation and the Charter, Constitution and Regulations of the Board, ibid., 55 (1859), supp., 188–95. 3.  M. H. 78 (1882), 448–52. For a detailed account of ABCFM’s history, Fred Field Goodsell, You Shall Be My Witnesses (Boston, 1959). 411

412

Notes to Pages 5–12

  4.  “The Fellowship of the American Board with the Churches: An Historical Statement,” M. H. 88 (1892), 440–47. For cooperation with foreign societies in the distribution of scriptural works, ibid., 17 (1821), 68. For the Board’s early structure and operation, William E. Strong, The Story of the American Board (Boston, 1910), 140–62, 305–10; Goodsell, Witnesses, 5–16.   5.  Prudential Committee Report to the Board, M. H. 44 (1848), 336–40; E. D. G. Prime, Forty Years in the Turkish Empire, or, Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell, D.D., 4th ed. (New York, 1877), 50.   6.  Joseph K. Greene, Leavening the Levant (Boston, 1916), 28.  7. M. H. 18 (1822), 179; 20 (1824), 4; 22 (1826), 212, 360; Rev. Daniel H. Temple, ed., The Life and Letters of Rev. Daniel Temple, for Twenty-five Years a Missionary of the ABCFM in Western Asia (Boston, 1855).   8.  Instructions of Prudential Committee to Goodell and Byrd, M. H. 19 (1823), 141–43; letter from Goodell in Beirut, ibid., 20 (1824), 215; letter from Fisk in Beirut, ibid., 21 (1825), 33; letter from Bird, ibid., 272; ibid. 278–80; 23 (1827), 297; Report from Bird, Goodell, Smith, ibid., 24 (1828), 348–51; 25 (1829), 8; 26 (1830), 4–5; 28 (1832), 5; Prime, William Goodell, 93–105.  9. M. H. 27 (1831), 280; Brewer’s journal, ibid., 329; letter from Goodell, Constantinople, ibid., 28 (1832), 151–52, 397; ibid., 29 (1833), 439. In returning to Smyrna in 1830, Brewer had left the employ of the American Board and was sponsored by the New Haven Ladies’ Greek Association. P. E. Shaw, American Contacts with the Eastern Churches, 1820–1937 (Chicago, 1937), 109–20. 10.  M. H. 56 (1860), supp., 47; 58 (1862), 336; Strong, American Board, 80–90, 146–48. 11. The term “Ottoman” comes from Osman, who ruled over northwestern Asia Minor in the late thirteenth century and founded the dynasty bearing his name. The Sultan derived his spiritual authority from his claim to be Caliph, ruler of all the Muslim faithful. Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains, Ideology and Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London and New York, 1999), 1, 46–48; Cyrus Hamlin, Among the Turks (New York, 1877), 23–24, 83–84, 339. 12. Halil Inalcik, “The Rise of the Ottoman Empire,” and “The Heyday and Decline of the Ottoman Empire,” The Cambridge History of Islam, v. 1A, The Central Islamic Lands from Pre-Islamic Times to the First World War (Cambridge, UK, 1970), 295–353; Stephen Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (Cambridge, UK, 1965), 154–56. 13. Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd ed. (London, 1968), 21–73; Hamlin, Among the Turks, 23, 347; Sir Charles Eliot, Turkey in Europe, 2nd. ed. (London, 1908), 173–75; Avigor Levy. ed., Jews, Turks, Ottomans (Syracuse, NY, 2002), xviii; George E. White, Adventuring with Anatolia College (Grinnell, IA, 1940), 40. 14. Uriel Heyd, “The Later Ottoman Empire in Rumelia and Anatolia,” The Cambridge History of Islam, v. 1A, 362–69; Lewis, Modern Turkey, 74–128. For a balanced perspective on the last decades of Ottoman rule, see M. E. Yapp, The Making of the Modern Near East 1792–1923 (London and New York, 1987). 15. Eliot, Turkey in Europe, 253–61; Dimitri Gondicas and Charles Issawi, eds., Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism (Princeton, NJ, 1999), 3–11; Evangelos



Notes to Pages 13–20

413

Kofos, “Patriarch Joachim III (1878–1894) and the Irredentist Policy of the Greek State,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 4, no. 2 (Oct. 1986), 107–20. 16.  For a comprehensive treatment of Armenian history, see Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, II, Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century (New York, 1997). 17. Deringil, Domains, 69, 82; Halil Inalcik, “Foundations of Ottoman-Jewish Cooperation,” in Levy, ed., Jews, Turks, Ottomans, 3–14; Rev. Edwin E. Bliss, “The Missions of the American Board in Asiatic Turkey, 1831–87,” M. H. 84 (1888), 250; 86 (1890), 343–46. Population figures vary widely. See Kemal H. Kapat, The Politicization of Islam (Oxford, 2001), 94, 97, 184, 343–44; Harvey Porter, “Outline of the History and Ethnology of the Turkish Empire,” in William H. Hall, ed. Reconstruction in Turkey (New York, 1918), 15. For the Alevis, George E. White, “The Alevi Turks of Asia Minor,” The Contemporary Review, 104 (July–Dec., 1913), 690–98. 18.  For estimated illiteracy, Deringil, Domains, 107. 19. Dr. George W. Wood, “Constantinople as a Missionary Field,” Annual Report of the ABCFM (Boston, 1885), 35 (henceforth, ABCFM Annual Report); Hamlin, Among the Turks, 375–77; Suraiya Faroqhi, Subjects of the Sultan. Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (London, New York, 2000), 9–10, 276. 20.  On the conversion of Muslims, “Journal of Pliny Fisk,” M. H. 20 (1924), 306; “Present Attitude of Mohammedanism,” ibid., 29 (1833), 383–87; 39 (1843), 207, 276; 44 (1848), 51. 21.  “Objects of the Missions to the Oriental Churches, and the Means of Prosecuting Them,” ibid., 35 (1839), 40; “Journal of H. G. O. Dwight,” ibid., 34 (1838), 462. 22. Hamlin, Among the Turks, 73. French Catholic missionaries had long been active in the empire under the Capucin, Carmelite and Jesuit orders. Deringil, Domains, 119. 23. “Present Attitude of Mohammedanism,” op. cit.; “Leading Object of the Missions to the Oriental Churches,” M. H. 38 (1842), 430–31; Gerasimos Augustinos, “‘Enlightened’Christians and the ‘Oriental’ Churches: Protestant Missions to the Greeks in Asia Minor, 1820–1860,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, v. 4, no. 2 (Oct. 1986), 129–42; Paul William Harris, Nothing But Christ: Rufus Anderson and the Ideology of Protestant Foreign Missions (New York and Oxford, 1999), 6, 16. 24. Prudential Committee’s instructions to Revs. Goodell and Byrd, op. cit., 141; Temple, Life and Letters, 110; Prime, William Goodell, 173–75, 179–80, 196, 263–65. Second quote by Ernest Riggs, “His Relations to the Language,” M. H. 118 (1922), 310. 25.  “Objects of the Missions to the Oriental Churches, and the Means of Prosecuting Them,” op. cit.; letter from William Goodell, Constantinople, M. H. 38 (1842), 135; ibid., 39 (1843), 206; 48 (1852), 43–45; Annual Report to the Board, ibid., 55 (1859), supp., 53–54; Greene, Levant, 73–76, 136–40; Prime, William Goodell, 220–22, 266–85, 346–47; Richard Clogg, “A Millet within a Millet: the Karamanlides,” in Gondicas and Issawi, eds., Ottoman Greeks, 115–42. 26. Frank A. Stone, Academies for Anatolia: A Study of the Rationale, Program and Input of the Educational Institutions Sponsored by the American Board in Turkey: 1830–1980. (Lanham, MD, 1984), 37–41.

414

Notes to Pages 20–24

27.  M. H. 25 (1829), 218; 26 (1830), 29, 41–49; 32 (1836), 5, 56–57; 33 (1837), 396; 34 (1838), 4; 40 (1844), 331; P. E. Shaw, American Contacts, 27–28, 74–80; Sophi Papageorgiou, [American Missionaries in Greece 1820–1850] (Athens, 2001). For the autonomous development of the Orthodox Church in Greece, Charles Frazee, The Orthodox Church and Independent Greece 1821–1852 (Cambridge, UK, 1969). 28.  M. H. 19 (1823), 206; letter from William Schauffler, Constantinople, ibid., 32 (1836), 137; ibid., 41 (1845), 5; 43 (1847), 407–11; 45 (1849), 4–5, 101–3; 52 (1856), 257; Constantina P. Kiskira, [“Thessaloniki in 1847 and the First American Penetration in the Balkans”], [City of the Thesssalonians], v. 6 (Oct. 2001), 107–22. A memorial to Rev. Eliphal Maynard inscribed as “American Missionary to the Jews,” age 29, dated Sept. 14, 1849, remains in the Protestant Cemetery in Thessaloniki. 29.  M. H. 39 (1843), 278; 40 (1844), 4. In 1856 the expanded mission field was divided into the Northern and Southern Armenian Missions, ibid., 52 (1856), 98; Cyrus Hamlin, My Life and Times, 2nd ed. (Boston and Chicago, 1893), 183. 30.  M. H. 39 (1843), 348; 40 (1844), 117–19, 203–4; 42 (1846), 195–200; Temple, Life and Letters, 228–33; Hamlin, Among the Turks, 32, 132–35. 31.  M. H. 38 (1842), 432; 84 (1888), 255; Prime, William Goodell, 171–78, 229–36, 306–14. Turkey was not the only instance of ambiguity concerning ABCFM’s intentions. Its earlier mission to the Sandwich Islands resulted in a more intrusive missionary involvement than originally planned. Andrew, Christian Commonwealth, 159–64. 32. Annual Report of the Prudential Committee, M. H. 42 (1846), 331, 338, 356–57; 43 (1847), 4–5; 46 (1850), 6; Bliss, “The Missions of the American Board in Asiatic Turkey, 1831–87,” op.cit., 255; Anthony A. M. Bryer, “The Pontic Revival and the New Greece,” in N. P. Diamandouras, ed., Hellenism and the First Greek War of Liberation (1821–1830): Continuity and Change (Thessaloniki, 1976), 175. 33. A crowd stoned Edwin Bliss’s home in Trebizond in 1845. Dr. Azariah Smith suffered a similar attack in Erzerum in 1846. M. H. 41 (1845), 303; ibid., 42 (1846), 373. For the origins of the “Capitulations,” Eliot, Turkey in Europe, 116–19. For the treaty of 1830, James A. Field, Jr., America and the Mediterranean World, 1776–1882 (Princeton, New Jersey, 1969), 141–53. For intervention by U.S. diplomatic officials, ibid., 37–40; M. H. 45 (1849), 4; 52 (1856), 77; 58 (1862), 336–37; 71 (1875), 36; 83 (1887), 434; 84 (1888), 62–63, 532–33; 92 (1896), 510. 34.  Ibid., 44 (1848), 98–99; 47 (1851), 6, 81, 285; address from the Constantinople Mission to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, ibid., 55 (1859), 24–25; Prime, William Goodell, 330–32, 384–87, 401–4, 483–85; Leon Arpee, The Armenian Awakening, A History of the Armenian Church, 1820–1860 (Chicago, 1909), 137–43. 35. Louise Nalbandian, The Armenian Revolutionary Movement (Berkeley, CA, 1963), 42–45. Revs. P. O. Powers and E. E. Bliss of the Trebizond station described sharp divisions within the Armenian community at Marsovan in the early 1850s that spurred religious dissent. M. H. 47 (1851), 374–75, 407; 48 (1852), 118–20, 197. For the formation of Greek evangelical churches without significant missionary involvement other than translations of the Gospels, Ioannis Agapidis, [Greek Evangelical Communities in the Pontus] (Thessaloniki, 1948), 7. 36.  M. H. 47 (1851), 291–92, 351–53; 48 (1852), 4; 53 (1857), 4; 55 (1859), supp., 54; Prime, William Goodell, 372–78.



Notes to Pages 25–32

415

37.  “Objects of the Missions to the Oriental Churches, and the Means of Prosecuting Them,” op. cit.; “The Essentially Progressive Nature of Missions to the Heathen,” M. H. 38 (1942), 115–16; ibid., 34 (1838), 434. 38.  ibid., 32 (1836), 283–84; 33 (1837), 6, 447; 38 (1842), 454; 43 (1847), 75; Hamlin, Among the Turks, 61–66, 205–21. 39.  M. H. 52 (1856), 13; 92 (1885), 309; Other American Protestant groups, chiefly Presbyterians, United Presbyterians and Methodists, conducted missions in other parts of the Ottoman Empire, such as Syria, Egypt, and Bulgaria. Within Asia Minor, rival groups only briefly challenged the ABCFM’s dominance among American Protestant evangelizers. The American Episcopal Board maintained a “Bishop” in Constantinople from 1845 to 1850 without notable results. Shaw, American Contacts, 46–70. The Baptist Missionary Union also withdrew after an exploratory probe. Annual Report of the ABCFM (Boston, 1886), 31; M. H. 83 (1887), 434; 85 (1889), 405. For the Catholic rivalry, ibid., 41 (1845), 64–66; 78 (1882), 266; 84 (1888), 532; Tracy to Judson Smith, Feb. 22, 1890, ABC 16.9.3., v. 38, no. 1. 40.  M. H. 26 (1830), 4–5; 38 (1842), 108–16; 39 (1843), 205–6; 52 (1856), supp., 208; “Special Report to the Prudential Committee and Report on the Annual Meeting of the Board,” ibid., 55 (1859), 317 and supp., 13; ibid., 58 (1862), 234. For the history of the first decades of mission work from a financial perspective, ibid., 78 (1882), 433–47; Strong, American Board, 312–18; Goodsell, Witnesses, 208–18. 41.  M. H. 51 (1855), 340–43; “Report on Special Meeting of the Board,” ibid., 52 (1856), 100–102. 42.  “Report on Special Meeting of the Board,” op. cit.; “Report on Annual Meeting of the Board,” M. H. 52 (1856), 367–71; “Outline of Missionary Policy,” ibid., supp., 51–58; “Report on Mission to the Armenians,” ibid., 93–93; ibid., 55 (1859), 195; “The Native Pastorate an Essential Means of Procuring a Native Ministry,” ibid., 58 (1862), 339–41. Cf. William R. Hutchinson, Errand to the World, American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago, 1987), 77–90. 43.  M. H. 52 (1856), 260; letters from H. G. O. Dwight and William Goodell, Constantinople, to Rev. L. Bacon, June 2, 1856, ibid., supp., 47–51, 95; ibid., 59 (1963), 3–4; Hamlin, Among the Turks, 244–59, 281–84; idem., My Life and Times, 247–49, 371–73, 412–14; Strong, American Board, 165–71, 216–17. 44. Greene, Levant, 202–8; Hamlin, Among the Turks, 284–301; idem., My Life and Times, 436–38; 448–49; George Washburn, Fifty Years in Constantinople (Boston and New York, 1909), 1–13. 45.  M. H. 35 (1839), 5; 52 (1856), 56–58; letter from Mr. Dwight, Constantinople, ibid., 54 (1858), 100; “Annual Report of the Prudential Committee,” ibid., 55 (1859), supp., 54; ibid., 58 (1862), 271–72; 59 (1863), 268; 60 (1864), 130–33; Greene, Levant, 78, 161–62, 211–12, 305–6; Prime, William Goodell, 205–9, 248–49, 305, 342– 49, 388–89; Maria A. West, Romance of Missions (New York, 1875), 251–55. 46.  M. H. 55 (1859), supp., 59; 58 (1862), 9–10, 119–21, 239; 59 (1863), 268. A separate mission for “Turkey in Europe” was established in 1871, ibid., 81 (1885), 390–91. 47.  Annual meeting of the Mission to Western Turkey, Bebek, May 23, 1863, ABC 19.6.3., v. 1. 48.  George E. White, “Anatolia College Jubilee Address,” 1936, A.C. archives. 49.  M. H. 56 (1860), supp., 55.

416

Notes to Pages 32–39

50.  M. H. 47 (1851), 291–92, 374–75, 407–8; 48 (1852), 21, 42–45, 118–20, 197–98, 295, 317–18, 358; 52 (1856), 262–63; 55 (1859), supp., 50; 58 (1862), 146–48, 274; 89 (1893), 541; Greene, Levant, 211–12. For the Armenian Church in Sivas province, Robert H. Hewsen, “Armenia on the Halys River: Lesser Armenia and Sebastia,” in Richard H. Hovannisian, Armenian Sebastia/Sivas and Lesser Armenia (Costa Mesa, CA, 2004), 68, 73. The best single source for missionary personnel assigned to Marsovan is Charles T. Riggs, “History of the Merzifon Station,” c. 1939, “Ms. Histories of Missions,” Houghton Library, Harvard University, 31:3. Mr. Krikore is identified in the Annual Report for Marsovan Station, 1861, ABC 16.9.3., v. 1, no. 86. 51.  M. H. 58 (1862), 271; 59 (1963), 267–68; 61 (1865), 274. The chronic ill health of Rev. Bliss, initially charged with overseeing the Seminary’s transfer, caused his reassignment to Constantinople, delaying the Seminary’s reopening. Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Mission to Western Turkey, Constantinople, May 21, 1863, ABC 16.9.3., v. 1, no. 25. The reopening of the Girls School (called at that time the Armenian Female Boarding School) was delayed when Eliza Fritcher and Maria West were reassigned temporarily to the Harput Girls School in 1863 due to personnel shortages there. Annual Report of the Marsovan Station for 1863–1864, ibid., no. 89. Cf. James Barton, Daybreak in Turkey (Boston, 1908), 141–44. For the misunderstanding with local Protestants, M. H. 60 (1864), 266. 52. Ibid., 48 (1852), 42–45, 317–18, 358; 58 (1862), 148, 274; 64 (1868), 87; 80 (1884), 167; 87 (1891), 403; Suraiya Faroqhi, “Crisis and Change, 1590–1698,” in Halal Inalcik, ed. An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, v. 2 (Cambridge, 1994), 582; Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” I, 3–6; George E. White, Charles Chapin Tracy, Missionary, Philanthropist, Educator, First President of Anatolia College, Marsovan, Turkey (Boston and Chicago, 1918), 9–10; West, Romance, 322–24, 352–69; “Report of Marsovan Station for 1865,” ABC 16.9.3, v. 1, no. 91; Mary P. Wright to Rev. Clark, Jan. 9, 1886, ibid., no. 279. Population figures at this time were imprecise and generally seem to have been understated. For other estimates, Hewsen, “Armenia on the Halys River,” 65–66. 53.  Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Mission to Western Turkey, Constantinople, May, 1865, ABC 16.9.3., v. 1, no. 27; M. H. 59 (1863), 271; 60 (1864), 266; White, Tracy, 11–12; Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” I, 6–9; II, 2. 54. White, Tracy, 12; M. H. 61 (1865), 274; 62 (1866), 5; 65 (1869), 10; Greene, Levant, 211–13, 236–37. 55.  M. H. 65 (1869), 123; 73 (1877), 3; 75 (1879), 59–60; 76 (1880), 431; Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” I, 12. 56.  “Higher Education in Turkey,” M. H. 70 (1874), 15–17, 66; ibid., 71 (1875), 233; Stone, Academies, 138–41; Strong, American Board, 307, 218–320, 326–28. 57.  M. H. 77 (1881), 419–20; 83 (1887), 175. The Western Turkey Mission resolved in 1885 to pursue more earnestly the “speedy conversion” and baptism of Mohammedans. Minutes of the 1885 Annual Meeting of the Western Turkey Mission, ABC 16.9.3., v. 9. 58.  M. H. 76 (1880), 184; Marsovan Station Report for the Year 1881–1882, ABC 16.9.3., v. 10, no. 4. 59.  M. H. 58 (1862), 274; White, Tracy, 21.



Notes to Pages 39–43

417

60.  Rev. George F. Herrick, “A Native Ministry for Turkey,” M. H. 75 (1879), 288–90; Greene, Levant, 166. 61.  Charles Tracy from Amasia to Dr. G. N. Clark, Dec. 3, 1880, and Apr. 21, 1881, ABC 16.9.3., v. 17; Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” 13. 62.  Letter from Evangelical Community of Trebizond, cited in Minutes of Annual Meetings of Western Turkey Mission,1884 and 1885, ABC 16.9.3., v. 9; Marsovan Station Report for 1882, ibid., v. 10; Herrick to Clark, July 16, 1881, ibid., v. 14; Charles Tracy to Clark, Oct. 11, 1880, ibid. v. 17. A teacher training school begun at Sivas in 1881 graduated its first class in 1887. Greene, Levant, 200. 63.  Herrick to Clark, July 16 and Aug. 8, 1881, ABC 16.9.3., v. 14; Edward Riggs to Clark, Aug. 13, 1881, ibid., v. 16; Report of Marsovan Theological School for 1882, by Geo. F. Herrick, ibid.; “Anatolia College,” M. H. 77 (1881), 386–87. George White at a later time elaborated on the title: “Anatolia is the name given locally by all the people to the Asia Minor wing of the Turkish Empire. They understand and like and employ this designation in their established nomenclature.” To James L. Barton, Minneapolis, Dec. 10, 1917, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 371. 64.  Herrick to Clark, Sept. 30 and Dec. 6, 1881, ABC 16.9.3., v. 14; Annual Report of the Marsovan Theological Seminary, 1883–1884, ibid., v. 10. Only a year earlier, Tracy had believed it more probable that the projected high school would be located in the larger town of Amasia rather than in Marsovan, until funding prospects collapsed there. Tracy to Clark, Oct. 11, 1880, ibid., v. 17. When the plan for the college failed initially, he wrote that it would “as far as we can see, put an end to the Seminary in about three years.” Tracy to Clark, Aug. 30, 1881, ibid. 65.  Letter from G. Thoumayian, President of the College Committee of the Pontus Evangelistic Association, to the American Board Missionaries of the Western Turkey Mission, Apr. 27, 1885, in “Anatolia College, Marsovan, Turkey, 1885,” Princeton University archives. Herrick’s petition could only have benefitted from the election of colleague Edward Riggs to chair the Mission’s annual meeting as well as the latter’s appointment to its Education Committee, which made its recommendation to the full Mission. Minutes of Annual Meeting of Western Turkish Mission, May 9, 1885, ABC 16.9.3., v. 9; Herrick to Clark, Nov. 9, 1885, ibid., v. 14; Riggs to Clark, Feb. 6, 1886, ibid., v. 16; Reports of Marsovan Station, Apr. 1885 and May 1886, ibid., v. 10. 66.  Henry Dwight and George Herrick to Rev. J. O. Means, June 2, 1883, Minutes of 1883 Annual Meeting; Report of Committee on Plans and Missions, June 7, 1884, Minutes of 1884 Annual Meeting, ABC 16.9.3., v. 9; M. H. 84 (1888), 297–98. Other regional associations of evangelical churches were the Cilicia Union in southern Turkey, the Central Union and the Harput Union in the east. The controversy over cooperation between missionaries and native churches, so serious as to occupy a full volume of ABCFM papers, was largely resolved through a formula for sharing authority while leaving the missionaries in control of funds from the Board. M. H. 84 (1888), 297–98. Cf., Greene, Levant, 123–25, 323–24; Goodsell, Witnesses, 100–109; Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” I, 16. 67.  Minutes of Annual Meeting, May 1882; Report of Committee on Plans and Missions, June 7, 1884; Report of Special Committee on Theological Seminary, May 27 and June 6, 1884; Minutes of Annual Meetings, 1885 and 1886, ABC 16.9.3., v. 9; “Draft Plan for the Proposed Theological Seminary in Constantinople,”

418

Notes to Pages 43–48

approved by the unanimous vote of the Joint Committee on the Theological Seminary, Constantinople, September 11, 1885, and amended version of same bearing notation: “Revised and approved by the Prudential Committee of the ABCFM, Jan. 23, 1886,” ABC 16.5., v. 5. The plan as drafted by the mission leadership in Constantinople, prior to amendments by the Prudential Committee, provided for transferring to the proposed new seminary the classes studying at Marsovan and also reassigning there one or two of the Marsovan missionaries. For arguments against relocating the seminary, Herrick to Clark, Sept. 26, 1883; July 25, 1884: Mar. 7 and Dec. 22, 1885, ABC 16.9.3., v. 14; Tracy to Clark, Oct. 7, 1884, June 14, 1886, ibid., v. 17; J. F. Smith to Clark, Jan. 6, 1886, ibid., v. 16. The Marsovan church by this time had become wholly independent and self-supporting. Riggs to Clark, Feb. 5, 1883, ibid. 68.  Edward Riggs to Rev. Clark, Oct. 19, 1885, ibid.; ABCFM Annual Report, 1885, xiv. Marsovan station’s annual report for 1885 cited the recent meeting of the Pontus Evangelical Association as “an example of the cordial relations, sympathy and mutual confidence which exist among the laborers in this field.” ABC 16.9.3., v. 10, no. 7. For a strong moral defense of the policy of insisting upon financially, self-sustaining indigenous institutions, Charles C. Tracy, Talks on the Veranda in a Far-Away Land (Boston and Chicago, 1893), 247–51. 69. “Action of Prudential Committee,” ABC 16.9.3., v. 10; letter from Rev. Clark, Aug. 20, 1884, cited in Report by Standing Committee on the Theological Seminary, Minutes of W. T. Mission for 1885, ibid., v. 9; letter from Pontus Evangelistic Association, Apr. 9, 1886; and from Marsovan Church to Dr. Clark, June 15, 1886, ibid., v. 10; Edward Riggs to Rev. Judson Smith, Nov. 22, 1889, ibid., v. 16; Dr. G. W. Wood, “Constantinople as a Missionary Field,” op. cit. The Western Turkish Mission continued to recommend to the Prudential Committee the establishment of a seminary in Constantinople well into the 1890s, but failed to reverse its decision. Minutes of the Forty-ninth and Fifty-second Annual Meetings of the Western Turkey Mission, Constantinople, May 20, 1890, and June 3, 1893, ABC 16.9.3, v. 19, nos. 1, 8. 70.  M. H. 81 (1885), 434–35. 71.  ABCFM Annual Report, 1886, 33. 72.  M. H. 78 (1882), 411. 73.  Minutes of Annual Meeting of Western Turkey Mission, May, 1886, ABC 16.9.3., v. 9, no. 11. 74. Temple, Life and Letters, 40, 50, 185, 218, 273, 304, 489. 75.  William G. McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, an Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607–1977 (Chicago, 1978), 106–22. 76.  Quote from Runciman, Constantinople, 190; Shaw, American Contacts, 106–8, 156–61; Gerasimos Augustinos, The Greeks of Asia Minor, Confession, Community, and Ethnicity in the Nineteenth Century (Kent, Ohio, 1992), 114–22; Noel Buxton and Rev. Harold Buxton, Travel and Politics in Armenia (New York, 1914), 78–97; 251–52; William E. Hocking, et al., Re-Thinking Missions, A Laymen’s Inquiry After One Hundred Years (New York and London, 1932), 16, 84–85. For a representative view of the issue of separation of church and state by missionaries to Turkey at this time, Rev. Edward Riggs, “Greece and Turkey,” M. H. 75 (1879), 211–12. For an assertion of the standard missionary position that their intentions had not been



Notes to Pages 49–55

419

to divide the old Christian churches, but that the schism occurred despite missionary efforts as a result of the severe measures of the Gregorian Church, Barton, Daybreak in Turkey, 108–9, 157–68, 237.

CHAPTER 2 IDENTITY AND SURVIVAL: ANATOLIA’S FIRST DECADE (1886–1895)  1. M. H. 83 (1887), 8; Marsovan Station Report, 1888, ABC 16.9.3., v. 10; ABCFM Annual Report, 1888, 33. The Marsovan Station Annual Report of May 1890 records that “not one in fifty even of Greeks and Armenians have openly espoused the evangelical faith” ABC 16.9.3., v. 18, no. 7. Adventuring with Anatolia College by George E. White (Grinnell, Iowa, 1940) remains the most detailed and inspiring account of the College’s thirty-two years in Turkey.   2.  George E. White, Charles Chapin Tracy, Missionary, Philanthropist, Educator, First President of Anatolia College (Boston and Chicago, 1918), 22.  3. M. H. 89 (1893), 224; 95 (1899), 186; Marsovan Station Report, May 1897, ABC 16.9.3., v. 10; Tracy to Clark, Feb. 15, 1887, ABC 16.9.3., v. 17, no. 33. Quotation from Ioannes Xenides, “The Story of Xenides,” The Christian Work: A Religious Weekly Review (no date), XL.   4.  Marsovan Station Report, 1888, op. cit.   5.  Marsovan Station Report, 1887, ABC 16.9.3., v. 10; Greene, Levant, 237.   6.  Tracy to Judson Smith, Dec. 14, 1887, ABC 16.9.3., v. 17; Marsovan Station Report, 1897, ibid., v. 18, no. 82; ABCFM Annual Report, 1888, 33; Charles C. Tracy, Talks on the Veranda in a Far-Away Land (Boston and Chicago,1893), 169–70.   7.  Of the other two station founders, E. M. Dodd had succumbed to cholera in 1865 and Rev. Julius Leonard withdrew from Marsovan for reasons of health in 1881. White, Tracy, 11–12, 32; Greene, Levant, 137–38; 236–37; Xenides, “Story,” XI.   8.  Tracy, Herrick, and Riggs to Clark, Dec. 28, 1881, and May 6, 1887, ABC 16.9.3., v. 17.  9. Report by Edward Riggs, August 1889, ABC 16.9.3., v. 10. As an example of a serious disagreement, George Herrick and Edward Riggs expressed sharply differing views about the readiness of the local people to take over missionary-planted institutions. Whereas Herrick urged turning churches and schools over to the natives as soon as possible, Riggs believed a long preparatory period must ensue before they could assume that responsibility. Riggs to Tillman, Jan. 14, and to Clark, Oct. 3, 1882, ABC 16.9.3., v. 16. See also Tracy, Veranda, 240–43. 10. White, Tracy, 21–22; Edward Riggs, “A Busy Summer Day in Marsovan,” Aug. 1889, ABC 16.9.3., v. 10, no. 28; M. H. 85 (1889), 404–5. 11. White, Tracy; M. H. 64 (1868), 85–87. 12.  Tracy to Barton, Mar. 1910, ABCFM Papers, W. T. Mission, v. 46, no. 26. 13. Tracy, Veranda, 111. Edward Riggs wrote of his colleague: “I doubt if there is any member of our circle that has more of a hold on the heart and sympathies of the native friends here than Rev. C. C. Tracy.” To Judson Smith, May 16, 1892, ABC 16.9.3., v. 26, no. 14.

420

Notes to Pages 56–60

14. Marsovan Station Annual Report 1891–1892, ABC 16.9.3., v. 18, no. 28; White, Adventuring, 13, 19–20, M. H. 117 (1921), 208–10; Xenidis, “Story,” XII. 15.  Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College, 1897; M. H. 86 (1890), 353; 92 (1896), 348. Cf. Stone, Academies, 16–17. 16. Marsovan Station Report for year ending Apr. 1885, ABC 16.9.3., v. 10; Tracy to Clark, Mar. 24, 1885, ibid., v. 17; Riggs to Clark, Sept. 6, 1887, ibid., v. 16. 17.  J. F. Smith to Rev. Clark, Feb. 22, 1881, ibid., no. 296; Rev. Julian Leonard to Rev. Clark, May 3, 1886, ibid., v. 14; Jane Smith to Dr. J. Smith, May 28, 1889, ibid., v. 16; Tracy to Judson Smith, May 6, 1893, ibid., v. 26, Part 1; “The Purchase and Ownership of Property,” Memorandum B, submitted by Marsovan Station to U.S. Consul Jewett, Feb. 22, 1893, ibid., v. 19, no. 142; White, Tracy, 26–27; Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College, 1897. A proclamation by U.S. President Grant in 1874 authorized an agreement with Turkey permitting U.S. citizens to own property in accordance with Ottoman legislation allowing the operation of private and foreign schools. ABC 16.5., v. 8, no. 57. 18.  Marsovan Station Reports, 1887 and 1888, ibid., v. 10; “Estimates for Anatolia College, 3rd year, Sept. 1, 1888 to Aug. 31, 1889,” by J. F. Smith, Treasurer, ibid.; Tracy, Smith, Herrick and Riggs to Clark, May 6, 1887, ibid., vol. 17; idem. to Judson Smith, Dec. 13, 1887, ibid., v. 16; Tracy to Judson Smith, Sept. 13, 1889, ibid., v. 17; White, Tracy, 31. The ABCFM’s publicity organ, The Missionary Herald (M. H.) , invited readers to assist Anatolia “without trenching on their regular gifts to the Board’s Treasury,” 87 (1891), 179; ibid., 86 (1990), 48. Inadequate resources fueled a constant lament by the Marsovan team, e.g., M. H. 90 (1894), 190; 92 (1896), 189–90; 95 (1899), 23. 19. White, Tracy, 29; Marsovan Station Report, 1888, ABC 16.9.3., v. 10, no. 12; Marsovan Station Annual Report, 1891–1892, ibid. v. 18, no. 28; Tracy to Judson Smith, July 11, 1892, ibid., v. 26, Part 1, no. 214. 20.  Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College, 1897, 1903, 1908–09. 21.  Tracy to Barton, Apr. 12, 1909, ABC 16.9.3., v. 38, no. 104; M. H. 85 (1889), 19–20; 89 (1893), 440–43; Tracy, Veranda, 168–69. Tracy would have known Hamlin during a three-year assignment in Constantinople (1870–1873). Their observed similarities are most likely due to common origins in pious farming families and their practically oriented, activist characters. Tracy was more fortunate in the timing of his career, when the conservative policies causing Hamlin’s departure from the ABCFM had partly yielded to a larger view of the importance of education. At about the same point in his own service as when Hamlin had been impelled to resign, Tracy was able to write, “The work of foreign evangelization is a grand, a heroic, a divine work.” Tracy, Veranda, 285–86. For the significantly modified views of the American Board by the early 1890s, see Rev. N. G. Clark, ABCFM foreign secretary, “Two Unsolved Mission Problems,” M. H. 89 (1893), 440–43. 22.  Riggs to Judson Smith, May 16, 1892, and July 31, 1893, ABC 16.9.3., v. 26, nos. 14 and 18. For the contrasting view of Charles Tracy, “Cooperation in Anatolia College,” ibid., v. 19, no. 133. 23.  Marsovan Station Annual Report 1890–1891, ABC 16.9.3., v.18, no. 17; Tracy to Clark, Feb. 15, 1887, ibid., v. 17, no. 33; to Judson Smith, Dec. 24, 1887, ibid., no. 35; Jan. 4, 1895, ibid., v. 26, no. 257; Apr. 16, 1895, ibid., no. 261. Cf. “Religious Quickening at Marsovan,” M. H. 83 (1887), 59.



Notes to Pages 61–66

421

24.  Marsovan Station Reports for 1889–90, no. 7; for 1890–91, no. 17; for 1897, no. 82; for 1899, no. 102, ABC 16.9.3., v. 18. Edward Riggs to Judson Smith, Feb. 10, 1890, ibid., v. 26, Part 1, no. 5; White, Tracy, 25; Anatolia College Director’s Book, A. C. archives, 17. 25.  George Herrick, “Sketch of the Marsovan Station,” M. H. 87 (1891), 403–6; White, Adventuring, 23. 26.  M. H. 84 (1888), 560. For local opposition against efforts to found evangelical churches, see Ioannis Agapides, [Greek Evangelical Communities in the Pontus] (Thessaloniki, 1948). Tracy remarked that reports of persecution in a village were always a good sign that the evangelist message was being heeded. Tracy, Veranda, 74, 122–29. 27. Ibid., 25; idem., “Fifteen Days in Asia Minor with an Old Friend,” ABC 16.9.3., v. 17; M. H. 98 (1902), 69. 28.  M. H. 76 (1880), 383; ibid., v. 75 (1879), 304; draft of a note to the president of the United States, enclosure to G. Herrick to Rev. Alden, July 4, 1893, ABC 16.9.3., v. 14; Tracy to Clark, July 10, 1885, ibid., v. 17. For the prevalence of Circassian brigands, W. M. Ramsay, Impressions of Turkey during Twelve Years’ Wanderings (London, 1897), 110–14. 29.  Mary Wright to Rev. Clark, Jan. 9, 1886, ABC 16.9.3.; M. H. 69 (1873), 187–90; 83 (1887), 503; 93 (1897), 314–15; 102 (1906), 491–93; Tracy, Veranda, 68–81, 199–200. 30. West, Romance, passim; Tracy, Veranda, 201–3; White, Adventuring, 22–26. 31. Tracy, Veranda, 39–41, 130–38; Strong, Board, 221–22; West, Romance, 4, 29, 49–50, 147. 32.  M. H. 84 (1888), 136; Mary Wright compared her earlier experience at Harput with the more flexible ambience of Marsovan, to Rev. Clark, Aug. 9, 1886, ABC 16.9.3., v. 17. 33.  Mary Wright to Rev. Clark, Jan. 9 and Aug. 9, 1886, ibid.; M. H. 59 (1863), 271; White, Tracy, 12, 48–49; Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College and Girls Boarding School, Marsovan, Turkey, 1897. 34.  Quote from report by Marsovan Girls School, M. H. 71 (1875), 276, 341. Cf., ibid., 98 (1902), 181; 102 (1906), 61; J. F. Smith to Rev. Judson Smith, Dec. 18, 1888, ABC 16.9.3., v. 16; Constantina Kiskira, “Evangelizing the Orient: New England Womanhood in the Ottoman Empire, 1830–1930,” Archivum Ottomanicum, 16 (1998), 282–87; Stone, Academies, 18–20; M. H. 101 (1905), 194–95. For changing attitudes underlying the operation of women’s mission societies, Patricia Ruth Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman’s Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870–1920 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1985); Dimitra Giannuli, “‘Errand of Mercy’: American Women Missionaries and the Philanthropists in the Near East, 1820–1930,” Balkan Studies, v. 39, no. 2 (Thessaloniki, 1998), 223–62. The three women’s boards merged with the ABCFM to form a single unit in 1927. M. H. 123 (1927), 10. 35.  Marsovan Station Report 1893–1894, ABC 16.9.3., v. 18, no. 54. Cf., “Influence of American Missionaries on the Social Life of the East,” M. H. 69 (1873), 190. Obituary for Mrs. Susan M. Schneider, ibid., 101 (1905), 17–18,. 36.  Ibid., 84 (1888), 298; 87 (1891), 327; Kiskira, “Evangelizing the Orient,” 281– 87; Giannuli, “‘Errand of Mercy,’” 239. Although male leadership during that era was seldom challenged, occasionally a voice was raised in protest. Maria A. West,

422

Notes to Pages 66–71

who oversaw the relocation of the Girls School from Constantinople in 1865, later wrote that she was “always in advance of the Constantinople station: and was too outspoken to suit friends or to advance my own interests.” She continued in a letter of Mar. 2, 1875, to Mr. Worcester: “A woman is often put down or brushed aside, where a man is heard simply because he is a man.” ABC 16.9.3., v. 8, Part 1; idem, Romance, 116. 37.  George Herrick to Judson Smith, Aug. 19, 1892, ibid., v. 23, no. 58; Report on Annual Meeting of Western Turkey Mission, Constantinople, May 27, 1895, ibid., v. 19, no. 13. 38. Tracy, Veranda, 254–83. For strictures against marriage with “locals,” Helen Sahagian, “Mary Louise Graffam, Ernest C. Partridge, and the Armenians of Sivas,” in Hovannisian, Armenian Sebastia, 386, fn. 25. 39.  Rev. George Herrick, “Sketch of Marsovan Station, Western Turkey,” M. H. 87 (1891), 405; Charles Tracy, “Cooperation in Anatolia College,” ABC 16.9.3., v. 19, no. 133; White, Adventuring, 15. 40.  Uriel Heyd, “The Later Ottoman Empire in Rumelia and Anatolia,” in The Cambridge History of Islam, v. 1A, 1970, 357–358; Ronald Grigor Suny, “Eastern Armenians Under Tsarist Rule,” in Hovannisian, The Armenian People, 126–27. 41.  Kofos, “Patriarch Joachim III,” 108–18. For a perspective on the Greek millet at this time, see Gerasimos Augustinos, The Greeks of Asia Minor, Confession, Communities, and Ethnicity in the Nineteenth Century (Kent, OH, 1992), 184–206. 42.  For the Armenian cultural revival, Vahe Oshagan, “Modern Armenian Literature and Intellectual History from 1700 to 1915,” in Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian People, 151–169. In addition to clause 61 of the Treaty of Berlin promising reforms, a secret accord between Great Britain and the Porte called essentially for the same. For the distribution of the Armenian population, the Treaty of Berlin, the British-Ottoman accord, and the formation of revolutionary groups, Richard G. Hovannisian, “The Armenian Question in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1914,” in ibid., 206–22, 234–35; idem., “Armenians in Asia Minor: The Final Phase, 1878– 1914,” paper presented at a conference on “Greece and Asia Minor,” at Anatolia College, July 1985; Nalbandian, Revolutionary Movement, 67–131. For a contrasting perspective, Jeremy Salt, Imperialism, Evangelism and the Ottoman Armenians, 1878–1896 (London,1993), 54–67. 43. Davison, Roderic H. “Turkish Attitudes Concerning Christian-Muslim Equality in the 19th c.,” American Historical Review, v. 59 (1954), 856–57; Eliot, Turkey in Europe, 400–402. Edward Riggs in Marsovan recorded the increasing mistrust and harsh measures against Armenians. To Judson Smith, Mar. 4, 1889, ABC 16.9.3., v. 16. 44.  U.S. Minister, Constantinople to Rev. H. O. Dwight, June 23, 1895, ibid., v. 26, no. 188. Quote from Tracy to Judson Smith, Feb. 13, 1892, ibid., no. 210. For the “Capitulations,” M. H. 83 (1887), 426; 110 (1914), 495–96; Davison, “Turkish Attitudes,” 857–58. One of many examples of contemptuous characterizations of Islam and Turkey in Board-sponsored works is David Brewer Eddy, What Next in Turkey? Glimpses of the American Board’s Work in the Near East (Boston, 1913). Though the author had never set foot in Turkey (Preface, IX), he freely described



Notes to Pages 71–76

423

the “bigoted Ottoman mind,” the “unchecked immorality” and “social decay” resulting from the Muslim faith, and applauded the decline of Muslim political power, particularly the loss of Ottoman territories in the Balkans, as having positive results for mission work (27, 39, 95). A rich source of negative commentary about Turkey was the Board’s monthly publication, The Missionary Herald (M .H.), op. cit., widely circulated among mission supporters for over a century. 45. Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains, 66–67, 93–134; Report on Missions to Turkey, by Selah Merrill, former U.S. Consul in Turkey, ABCFM Annual Report, M. H. 83 (1887), 502–3; ABCFM Report of Committee on Missions in Turkey, ibid., 88 (1892), 138–39. For correspondence in 1886 between the U.S. Legation, Constantinople, and the Western Turkey Mission about requirements by the Ministry of Public Instruction, ABC 16.5., v. 5, no. 24. Cf., Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, passim. 46.  G. Thoumayan, Chairman of the Anatolia Board of Managers to Rev. Clark, Marsovan, Apr. 9, 1886, ABC 16.9.3., v. 10. 47.  “Constitution of Anatolia College,” ibid., no. 31. The proposal from the Protestant churches of the Pontus region is cited in the resolution proposed by George Herrick at the Annual Meeting of the W. T. Mission in Constantinople, May 9, 1885, ibid., v. 9. The Pontus Evangelical Association submitted the constitution to Rev. Clark for ratification by the Prudential Committee, Apr. 9, 1886, ibid., v. 10. G. Thoumayan, in his letter to Rev. Clark, Apr. 9, 1886, op. cit., requested a greater voice for the Pontus Evangelistic Association in the management of the Seminary. 48.  Tracy to Clark, Apr. 13, 1886, ABC 16.9.3., v. 17; summary of Prudential Committee correspondence with Marsovan, 1886–1887, ibid., v. 10; President of the Anatolia Board of Managers to the Prudential Committee, May 6, 1887, ibid.; J. F. Smith to Rev. Judson Smith, Dec. 18, 1888, ibid., v. 16. For the founding of Central Turkey College, Charles T. Riggs, “Historical Sketch of the Aintab (Gaziantab) Station,” (undated), “Ms. Histories of Missions,” Houghton Library, Harvard University, Film 89:2, pp. 8, 15. For similarities between the founding constitutions of Central Turkey College and Euphrates College, and that proposed for Anatolia, M.H. 96 (1900), 223–26. 49. ABCFM Annual Report, 1891, xiv. For the American Board’s continuing ambivalence toward supporting other than theological instruction, see “Reminiscences of James L. Barton,” M. H. 123 (1927), 95–97. 50.  The Prudential Committee approved the “amended constitution” on July 26, 1886; Report by Finance Committee, Boston, July 17, 1888, ABC 16.9.3., v. 9, no. 42. For conditions for making the annual grant, see summary of Prudential Committee correspondence with Marsovan, ibid., v. 10; Tracy, Smith, Herrick, and Riggs to Rev. Clark, May 6, 1887, op. cit. For Central Turkey College, Greene, Levant, 210. For Anatolia’s supervision by the Prudential Committee, ABCFM Annual Report, 1891, 33. 51.  Thoumayan to Prudential Committee, May 6, 1887, ABC 16.9.3., v. 10, no. 134; Tracy, Smith, Herrick, and Smith to Clark, May 6, 1887, ibid., v. 17; idem., to Judson Smith, Dec. 13, 1887, ibid., v. 16. 52.  M. H. 82 (1886), 417.

424

Notes to Pages 76–80

53. Marsovan Station Report, May 1887, ABC 16.9.3., v. 10; John Smith to Judson Smith, Dec. 18, 1888, ibid., v. 16, no. 336, and Jan. 14, 1890, v. 26, no. 139; Herrick to Rev. Clark, Aug. 26, 1889, ibid., v. 14, no. 88. 54.  Hovannes Kayayan, on behalf of the Armenian Evangelical Church of Marsovan, to Judson Smith, Mar. 15, 1892, ibid., v. 26, no. 487; Kayayan and Boghos A. Torigian to the missionaries of Marsovan station, undated, ibid., v. 19, no. 139. Cf. “Summary of Director’s Statement to Board of Managers, July 4, 1892, ibid., no. 134; George Herrick to Rev. Garabed Thoumayan, Sept. 23, 1892, ibid., v. 23, no. 64; Herrick to Judson Smith, July 16 and Oct. 25, 1892, ibid., nos. 90 and 65. Ann Marston later provided a legacy for Anatolia upon her death in 1902; MBTAC, June 30, 1903. 55.  May 27, 1892, ABC 16.9.3., v. 19, no. 133. The view of their Armenian colleagues as children needing patient training was also expressed by George Herrick, to Judson Smith, Aug. 21, 1991, ibid., v. 23, no. 48. 56.  Riggs to Judson Smith, Aug. 29, 1892, ibid., v. 26. For similar views by the other two members of the Marsovan team, John Smith to Judson Smith, June 13, 1892, no. 151, and Oct. 8, 1892, no. 153, ibid.; G. Herrick to Judson Smith, Marsovan, Apr. 5, 1892, and London, July 16, 1892, ibid., v. 23, nos. 50, 90. For decisions taken in 1892, Herrick and Tracy to Prudential Committee, Boston, Aug. 9, 1892, v. 19, no. 135. For the Prudential Committee’s similar understanding of these events, ibid., v. 27, no. 215. 57. Robert L. Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, 1820–1960 (Athens, OH, 1970) 107–108. Another telling example was Harutune Jenanyan from Marash who, following studies at Union Theological Seminary and marriage to an American, became the first Principal of St. Paul’s Institute in Tarsus, an ABCFM institution. He encountered strong bias among his missionary colleagues against natives rising to leadership positions, causing him to resign his post. Jenanyan went on to establish and manage the Apostolic Institute in the town of Konia without American Board involvement, which successfully provided education for hundreds of Armenian children. Stone, Academies, 207–12, 229–37. For other examples of missionary characterization of Armenians as childlike, see West, Romance, 24, 75, 116, 168, 365. 58.  Summary of Director’s Statement to Board of Managers, July 4, 1892, ABC 16.9.3., v. 19, no. 134; Herrick to David P. Thompson, U. S. Minister, Constantinople, 1893, ibid., v. 23, no. 67; Marsovan Station Annual Report, May 1893, ibid., v. 18, no. 41. Herrick to Judson Smith, Samsun, Mar. 20, 1893, ibid., v. 23, no. 69; and from Constantinople, Mar. 24 and Apr. 11, 1893, ibid., nos. 70, 76. Cf. M. H. 89 (1893), 224–26. Herrick’s letters to Minister Thompson, memoranda signed by all four Marsovan missionaries conveying their appraisal, and the reports by U.S. Consul Jewett supporting the missionaries’ version of events and recommending severe measures against Husref Pasha are in Dispatches from U.S. Ministers to Turkey, 1818–1906, vs. 54, 55, Oct. l, 1892–Aug. 31, 1893, State Department Records, National Archives, Record Group no. 59 (henceforth, U.S. Dispatches). Armenian educators at other ABCFM-related institutions were also charged at this time with seditious activities. Cf. Stone, Academies, 149–50; Barbara J. Merguerian, “The United States Consulate at Sivas 1886–1908,” in Hovannisian, Armenian Sebastia, 249–51.



Notes to Pages 81–84

425

59.  Herrick to Judson Smith, Constantinople, Mar. 24, 1893, ABC, 16.9.3., v. 23, no. 70; Mar. 28, ibid., no. 72; Apr. 1, no. 73; Apr. 3, no. 74; July 4, 1894, no. 113. Herrick to David P. Thompson, Apr. 3, 1893, ibid., no. 75. Edward Riggs also defended the innocence of the Armenian teachers. Memorandum of Mar. 31, 1893, ibid., v. 18, no. 41. Cf. M. H. 89 (1893), 130, 226. 60.  Tracy to Judson Smith, Washington, DC, Apr. 7, 1893, ABC 16.9.3., v. 26, no. 230; to Judson Smith, Oberlin, Ohio, Apr. 25, 1893, ibid., no. 233; “United States Subjects in Turkey,” ibid., no. 231; Marsovan Station Report, May 1893, ibid., v. 18, no. 41; M. H. 89 (1893), 130, 266. 61.  Minister Thompson to Secretary of State Gresham, no. 71, Apr. 8, and no. 73, Apr. 14, 1893, U.S. Dispatches; Newberry to Thompson, Apr. 12, 1893, ibid., enclosure to Thompson to Gresham, no. 77, Apr. 24, 1893, ibid.; Newberry to Thompson, Apr. 12, 1893, enclosure to Thompson to Gresham, no. 78, Apr. 20, 1893, ibid.; Newberry to Gresham, no. 86, May 9, 1983, ibid. For President Cleveland’s message, The American Presidency, Presidential Speech Archive, Washington, DC. For brief accounts of these events, Daniel, Philanthropy, 115–16; Salt, Imperialism, 64–66. 62.  Herrick to Judson Smith, May 16, 1893, ABC 16.9.3., v. 23, no. 79. 63.  Herrick to Judson Smith, Constantinople, Apr. 3, 1893, ABC 16.9.3., v. 23, no. 74; to Sir Edward Grey Bart, July 31, 1893, ibid., no. 92. Cf. Herrick to Judson Smith, London, Sept. 19, 1893, ibid., no. 101 and Oct. 14, 1893, no. 102; Charles Tracy to Judson Smith, May 6, 1893, ibid., v. 26, no. 237. 64.  George Herrick from London and a missionary colleague from Constantinople wrote jointly to President Cleveland protesting press reports, thought to have originated with State Department officials, that the death sentences of Thoumayan and Kayayan were influenced by conclusions allegedly drawn by the Marsovan missionaries about the teachers’ complicity. The result, they submitted, was to jeopardize the lives of the missionaries at the hands of angry Armenians, even though the former continued to believe in the innocence of the two professors. Henry O. Dwight and George Herrick to President Cleveland, June 27, 1893, ibid., v. 23, no. 85; Herrick to Judson Smith, July 6, 1893, ibid., no. 86; Edward Riggs to J. Smith, July 31, 1893, v. 26, no. 18; George White to Judson Smith, Sept. 18, 1993, ibid., no. 339; Tracy to Judson Smith, Nov. 28, 1893, ibid., no. 250; Marsovan Station Report 1893–1894, ibid., v. 18, no. 54. 65.  Thompson to Gresham, no. 77, Apr. 24, 1893, U.S. Dispatches, v. 55; Newberry to Gresham, no. 78, May 9, 1893, ibid.; Nalbandian, Movement, 120. 66.  Tracy to Judson Smith, Oct. 3, 1893, U. S. Dispatches, v. 26, no. 248; Oct. 23, 1893, ibid., no. 249; Nov. 28, 1893, no. 250; George White to Mrs. Ucker, Minneapolis, Oct. 10, 1917, ibid., v. 46, no. 326. 67.  Marsovan Station Report, 1893–1894, June 1894, ABC 16.9.3., v. 18, no. 54; Herrick to Judson Smith, Oxford, Aug. 1, 1893, no. 91; from Constantinople to J. Smith, Nov. 6, 1893, ibid., no. 104; from London to A. W. Terrell, U. S. Minister in Constantinople, Aug. 29, 1893, no. 99; from Constantinople to Mr. Thoumayan, Constantinople, Jan. 26, 1894, no. 107; Tracy to Judson Smith, Marsovan, Aug. 7, 1893, no. 245; G. White to J. Smith, Sept. 18, 1893, ibid., v. 26, no. 339.

426

Notes to Pages 84–87

68.  Tracy to Judson Smith, Mar. 5, 1894, ibid., v. 26, no. 254; Marsovan Station Report, 1893–1894, op. cit. See also Tracy’s letter of May 8, 1895 to Minister Terrell, cited in Salt, Imperialism, 111. Tracy’s first reactions upon returning in the summer of 1893 confirmed his and Herrick’s understanding of events as they had represented them earlier to the Prudential Committee and the U.S. government. Tracy to J. Smith, Aug. 7, 1893, ABC 16.9.3., v. 23, no. 245. George White was already entertaining doubts. “We were sure the two teachers were innocent of connection with revolutionary affairs at first: I am sure of nothing now, though of course it would not do to say so.” To Judson Smith, Sept. 18, 1893, ibid., v. 26, no. 339. Cf. White to Judson Smith, May 29, 1894, ibid., no. 344; May 30, 1894, no. 345. Charles T. Riggs, Edward’s son, who began his missionary career at Marsovan in 1900, recorded in an unpublished “History of the Merzifon Station” (c. 1939), that subsequent to the events of January 1893, the Marsovan missionaries discovered that Armenian revolutionaries had been using the main college building for secret meetings and had probably printed the inflammatory placards there as charged by the government. It also appeared that the two Armenian professors were implicated in seditious activities. ABCFM Manuscript Histories of Missions, Houghton Library, Harvard University, microfilm 89, no. 31:3. Cf. White, Tracy, 34–35; W. J. Childs, Across Asia Minor by Foot (New York, 1917), 55–56. Nalbandian identifies Max Balian as an Anatolia student and Hunchakian member who participated in the secret posting of revolutionary placards in Marsovan in Movement (209, n. 40). The Anatolia College Director’s Book lists Muggerdich S. Balian from the Talas area as a sophomore in May 1892 who was “dropped” in July 1893. No evidence has come to light to indicate any doubt on the part of the missionaries that Turkish police were the perpetrators of the 1893 arson. Cf., Deringil, Domains, 129. 69.  Tracy to Judson Smith, Mar. 5, 1894 and Jan. 27, 1897, op. cit. Marsovan Station Report, 1893–1894, op. cit. 70. Station Treasurer John Smith recorded that Thoumayan had promised in December 1892, just before the crisis erupted, to do all he could to raise the required amount, Marsovan Station Report, May 1893, op. cit.; Tracy to Judson Smith, Apr. 19, 1899, ABC 16.9.3., v. 26, no. 299. 71.  Act to Incorporate the Trustees of Anatolia College, Mar. 14, 1894, ABCFM, Miscellaneous Papers Relating to the Near East Missions, 16.5, v. 7. 72.  Tracy to Judson Smith, no. 299, op. cit.; July 4, 1901, ibid., v. 38, no. 13. Tracy later justified placing Anatolia wholly under American control as necessary to save it from “imminent peril” during the tumultuous events of the mid-1890s. “Statement of Two Cases Concerning Anatolia College, and of Kindred Matters,” Feb. 1904, ibid., v. 27, no. 214. Cf. George White to Mr. Riggs, July 5, 1901, ibid., no. 163. When the Board prepared bylaws for the College in 1913, President George White recommended the elimination of a provision that “Natives may serve on the Board of Managers.” The draft bylaws were amended accordingly. White to J. L. Barton, Nov. 1913, ibid., v. 46, no. 224; commentary by Theodore Elmer to Barton, Dec. 2, 1913, ibid., v. 42, no. 58; MBTAC, Sept. 30, 1913; Jan. 27, 1914. 73.  Tracy to Judson Smith, July 8, 1895, ABC 16.9.3., v. 26, no. 263; Sept. 23, 1895, ibid., no. 268; Oct. 21, 1895, no. 269; Edward Riggs to Judson Smith, Oct. 16,



Notes to Pages 87–90

427

1895, ibid., v. 26, no. 28. Quotes from Marsovan Station Report, July 1896, ibid., v. 18, no. 72. The suspect student was Krikor Arakelian, who held U.S. citizenship. He was released following intervention by U.S. diplomatic authorities and departed for America in 1895. Anatolia Director’s Book, 19; Ali Tuzcu, [“Armenian Uprisings in Merzifon”], [Bulletin of the Turkish Historical Society], lvii, Dec., 1993, 795–827. For a summary of the proposed reforms, Salt, Imperialism, 85–93. 74.  Marsovan Station Report, July 1896, op. cit.; Marsovan Station Report 1897, ibid., no. 82; Edward Riggs to Judson Smith, Nov. 23, 1895, ibid., v. 26, no. 29; Aug. 13, 1896, ibid., no. 38; M. H. 92 (1896), 54–57; 95 (1999), 531; Merguerian, “U. S. Consulate,” 254–59. 75.  Riggs to Judson Smith, no. 29, op. cit.; Jan. 25, 1896, ibid., no. 32; to Harry Riggs, Constantinople, Nov. 23, 1895, ibid., no. 30. Notations in Anatolia’s Director’s Book identify nine former students, all but one Armenian, who had run afoul of the Ottoman authorities during the decade 1887–1896: Bedros Arslanian from Marsovan, expelled in 1887 and later imprisoned; Hohannes K. Pepeyan from Amasia, alumnus of 1888, “teacher at Herek, imprisoned on false charges”; Joseph T. Ktenides from Diabekir, 1888 alumnus, “long imprisoned on charge of sedition, released 1891”; Marderos Jivanian from Sokere, 1892 graduate, “got mixed in political affairs, exiled to Tripolis 1892. Died 1894”; Mihran H. Manissadjian, 1892 graduate from Amasia, “shot, killed in Amasia 1894”; Caspar H. Lordian from Hadjikeuy, entered Anatolia 1889 age 17, left 1892 “with subsequent history shadowed. Hanged in Yozgat 1896”; Muggerdich Mahmourian from Marsovan, graduated 1896, “imprisoned on political accus [sic]”; Daniel Temurian from Tocat, dismissed for unsatisfactory conduct in 1896, “became fugitive.” As previously noted, the Director’s Book also indicated that Krikor Arakelian left for Fresno, California, in 1895; this followed his being held by police on charges of complicity in a murder, according to Tuzcu, [“Armenian Uprisings”]. George Herrick wrote in defense of Jivanian and two other former students imprisoned on charges of sedition, Dikeran G. Gulbenkian from Marsovan, graduate of 1887; and Senekerim Kibadjian from Yozgat, expelled from the College in 1890. Herrick to Edward Grey Bart, July 31, 1893, op. cit. 76.  For Martha King’s obituary, M. H. 92 (1996), 143–44. Tracy to Judson Smith, Aug. 7, 1893, no. 245; Mar. 24, 1896, no. 275, ibid., v. 26. Cf. Marsovan Station Report, 1896, op. cit.

CHAPTER 3 ANATOLIA’S FLOWERING IN TURKEY: AN INTERNATIONAL CHRISTIAN COLLEGE (1896–1914) 1.  Rev. Judson Smith, “The Crisis in Turkey,” M. H. 92 (1896), 47; Marsovan Station Reports, 1896, 1897, op. cit.; Edwin M. Bliss, Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities (New York, 1896), 502–27. 2.  Marsovan Station Report, 1897, op. cit.; Marsovan Station Report, 1897–98, ABC 16.9.3., v. 18, no. 93; v. 29, no. 45. 3.  Marsovan Station Report,1897, op. cit.; Tracy to Judson Smith, Jan. 27, 1897, ABC 16.9.3., v. 26, no. 284. The primary school operated until 1913 when the Greek

428

Notes to Pages 91–98

community’s school was reopened. The Anatolian, 1913–1914, Marsovan, Turkey, 72.   4.  Riggs, “History of the Merzifon Station,” 23, 25; Marsovan Station Reports for 1896, no. 72; for 1897, no 82; for 1897–1898, no. 93, ABC 16.9.3., v. 18; Willard to Judson Smith, Nov. 12, 1896, ibid., v. 26, no. 386; Tracy to Judson Smith, June 1, 1889, ibid., no. 302. Cf. Ernest Pye, ed., Charlotte R. Willard of Merzifon, Her Life and Times (New York, 1933).   5.  Marsovan Station Report, 1897–1898, no. 93, op. cit.; Riggs, “History of the Merzifon Station,” 19, 24.   6.  Tracy to Judson Smith, Mar. 24, 1896, no. 275; Sept. 21, 1898, no. 294; Dec. 10, 1898, no. 295, ABC 16.9.3., v. 26; Marsovan Station Reports, 1896, ibid., v. 18, no. 73; 1897, ibid., no. 82; 1899, ibid., no. 102.   7.  Report of Marsovan Station, 1899, op. cit.; M. H. 89 (1893), 224, 387. Marsovan staff expressed acute anxiety over the delayed government recognition. Edward Riggs to George Herrick, Aug. 29, 1894, ABC 16.9.3., v. 23, no. 117.  8. White, Tracy, 50; West, Romance, 284–85, 291–92; Washburn, Fifty Years, 53. For the Goodell quotation, M. H. 24 (1828), 352. Cf., John R. Mott, The Evangelization of the World in this Generation (London, 1900), 13–14.   9.  Marsovan Station Annual Reports, 1891–1892 and 1897, ABC 16.9.3., v. 18, nos. 28, 82. Quote from letter to Judson Smith, Mar. 4, 1897, ibid., v. 19, no. 121. The Tracys’ third child, Myra, died from diphtheria during her parents’ furlough in America, following illnesses in Turkey. Ruth Tracy Millard, A Brief Biography of Dr. Charles Chapin Tracy, Founder of Anatolia College (Boston, c. 1960), 7. 10.  M. H. 99 (1903), 247. 11.  Marsovan Station Reports, 1897, 1897–98, 1899, 1907–08, ABC 16.9.3., v. 18, nos. 82, 93, 102; v. 29, no. 47. Edward Riggs to Judson Smith, Nov. 8, 1998, ABC 16.9.3., v. 26, Part 1, no. 51; “Marsovan. Medical-1901–02,” ibid., v. 29, no. 38. 12. Tracy, Veranda, 231–32. 13.  Marsovan Station Annual Reports, 1903–04 and 1906–07, ABC 16.9.3., v. 29, nos. 40, 45. 14.  The Orient (Constantinople, July 8, 1914), v. 5, no. 27; Annual Report of the Anatolia Hospital, 1913–1914, ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, no. 85; George White to James Barton, Feb. 9, 1918, ibid., v. 46, no. 338. Quote from Childs, Asia Minor, 52. For a brief biography of Dr. Marden, Lucy H. M. Marden, Jesse Krekore Marden, 1872– 1949, Missionary Physician (Claremont, CA, 1950). 15.  Anatolia Girls School Reports, 1910–11 and 1913–14, ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, nos. 62, 83; Claribel Platt, “The Martha King Memorial School,” in Pye, ed., Charlotte R. Willard, 57–64; The Orient, July 8, 1914, op. cit. 16. Mott, Evangelization, 3–4, 119; Hutchinson, Errand, 91–93; Hill, Household, 1–4; Henry H. Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” in ABCFM Manuscript Histories of Missions, 1942, 31a, 3. 17.  For economic improvement in Turkey, Karpat, Politicization, 93–96; Yapp, Near East, 195–96. For the Marsovan area, M. H. 101 (1905), 277–79; Tracy, Veranda, 25–30. The Black Sea ports and their trading volume at this time are described by a Greek traveler, Konstantinos N. Papamichalopoulos, [Travels in the Pontos] (Athens, 1903).



Notes to Pages 98–103

429

18.  Marsovan Station Annual Report for 1900, dated 1901, ABC 16.9.3., v. 29, no. 32; Alexis Alexandris, ”The Greek Census of Anatolia and Thrace (1910–1912): A Contribution to Ottoman Historical Demography,” Gondicas and Issawi, Ottoman Greeks, 63–66; Charles C. Tracy, “The Greek Work in the Marsovan District,” M. H. 97 (1901), 276–78; W. J. Childs, Asia Minor, 10–13. For missionary disappointment in prospects for evangelizing Muslims via the Armenian churches, George Herrick, “How to Win Moslem Races,” in Methods of Mission Work among Moslems (New York, 1906), 163–64. 19.  For opposition by the Orthodox Church, Tracy to J. Smith, Oct. 12, 1888, ABC 16.9.3., v. 18, no. 39; Marsovan Station report for 1900, ibid., v. 29, no. 32. For the Patriarch’s circular, ibid., v. 40, no. 167. For the Orthodox Church in Constantinople, C. P. Kiskira, “American Christian Penetration of Constantinople Society in the Late 19th Century,” Balkan Studies, v. 40, no. 2 (Thessaloniki, 1999), 315. For an insightful commentary by a Greek Anatolia graduate and professor who became an Evangelical, Xenides, “Story,” XII. For the formation of Orthodox churches in the Pontus region, Agapides, [Evangelical Communities], passim; Greene, Levant, 224, 308–9; Report of the Committee to the Annual Meeting of the W. T. Mission, 1906, ABC 16.9.3. v. 27, no. 153. 20.  Charles T. Riggs, “The Work of the American Board Among the Greeks,” ABCFM Manuscript Histories of Missions, 1948, Harvard Univ., Houghton Library, film 89, items 31–35, pp. 17–19, 26, 28; M. H. 80 (1884), 146; 84 (1888), 353– 54; 83 (1887), 144; 85 (1889), 195; Marsovan Station Report, 1887, op. cit.; Edward Riggs, “Report of the Committee in Regard to Work Among Greek-Speaking Greeks,” May 13, 1893, ABC 16.9.3., v. 18, no. 42; Alexandris, “Greek Census,” 64. For White quotation, Marsovan Station Annual Report for 1900, ABC 16.9.3., v. 29, no. 32. For enrollment figures, Report of Anatolia College, 1908–09, ibid., no. 50. For the Greek community of Marsovan, Kyriakos Hatzikyriakides, “The Mines of the Pontic Greeks,” in Georgios A. Yannakopoulos, ed., The Pontos of the Hellenes (Athens, n.d.) 253–78; M. H. 108 (1912), 131. For religious proportions, ibid., 99 (1903), 28. 21. Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” 26; Marsovan Station Report, 1897, op. cit. Quotes from Greene, Levant, 237; George White to Judson Smith, July 13, 1899, ABC 16.9.3., v. 26, no. 383. 22.  For map and Tracy quote, M. H. 108 (1912), 134. For Riggs’s trip and students from Russia, Riggs to Barton, Sept. 29, 1909, ABC 16.9.3., v. 37, no. 231; Tracy to Barton, Oct. 4, 1909, ibid., v. 38, no. 105; Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College, 1908–09. For Novorossiysk’s development, Charles King, The Black Sea, A History, Oxford, 2004, 196–97, 204. 23.  For schools and enrollment figures, Hall, Reconstruction, 36–37. Quotes from Anatolia College, Report and Catalogue, 1903, Marsovan, Turkey, 8. Cf., Nalbandian, Movement, 50. 24. Storrs, Addresses on Foreign Missions, 11, 19, 33; Rev. John Hopkins Denison, “New Motives and Changed Purposes in Missions,” The One Hundredth Anniversary of the Haystack Prayer Meeting (Boston, 1907), 84–93; Rev. Henry C. King, “Changes Within the Century in Foreign Missionary Theory and Practice,” ibid., 163–176; Hutchinson, Errand, 91–92, 102–105; M. H. 84 (1888), 471; Strong,

430

Notes to Pages 103–107

American Board, 333–35, 357; Alden H. Clark, “How the Board Gets its Missionaries,” M. H. 118 (1922), 302–4. 25.  Committee report in ABC 16.9.3., v. 27, no. 153, 1906. For further discussion of the issue by the Mission, see Annual Mission Letter to James L. Barton, Constantinople, May 17, 1907, ibid., no. 147; no. 154, op. cit. For Charles Tracy’s position on the issue, Tracy to Barton, May 7, 1911, ibid., v. 46, no. 45; Feb. 16, 1915, ibid., no. 98. 26.  “The Missionaries’ Part in Evangelization,” M. H. 99 (1903), 340–41; Charles C. Tracy, “Anatolia College, Its Genesis, Development, Character, Prospects and Needs,” 1903, ABC 16.9.3., v. 27, no. 271. 27. ABC 16.9.3., v. 27, no. 154, op. cit; Henry Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” I, 16–17. 28.  Reports of the Theological Seminary, 1902–03, 1908–09, ABC 16.9.3., v. 29, nos. 39, 54; Report of Marsovan Station, 1906–07, ibid., no. 45; circular letter from George E. White and T. A. Elmer, on behalf of the Marsovan Station, Jan. 12, 1912, ibid. v. 46, no. 191; White to Barton, Feb. 23, 1912, ibid., no. 192. 29.  The number of emigrants from Ottoman Asia to the United States between 1895 and 1914 has been estimated at 150,000. Armenians alone numbered 66,000. Robert Mirak, “Armenian Emigration to the United States to 1915,” Journal of Armenian Studies, v. 1, no. 1 (Autumn, 1975), 7, 9, 12, 21. Berge Bulbulian cites the number of Armenians from Marsovan in the Fresno area in 1906 as 137. The Fresno Armenians, History of a Diaspora Community (Fresno, CA, 2000), 31–45. Tracy’s quote from C. Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” I, 14–16. Cf. Charles Tracy, “The Education in the United States of Natives from Mission Fields,” M. H. (1888), 51–53; 104 (1908), 467; H. Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” 16–17. 30. George Herrick to Judson Smith, Oct. 2, 1891, ABC 16.9.3., v. 23, no. 49; Annual Mission Letter, to Judson Smith, Constantinople, May 22, 1901, v. 27, no. 142; no. 148, op. cit.; Annual Mission Letter, to James Barton, Marsovan, July 1908, ibid., no. 148; Marsovan Station Annual Reports, 1907–08, ibid., v. 29, no. 47, and 1909–10, no. 58; Tracy to Barton, May 17, 1911, ibid., v. 46, no. 46; Rev. Theodore Elmer to Barton, Mar. 11, 1911, ibid., v. 42, no. 40; Pye to Barton, May 19, 1913, and May 29, 1914, ibid., v. 45, nos. 75 and 85; James L. Barton, “What the Changes in Turkey Mean to Us,” M. H. 104 (1908), 467. 31. Report of Theological Seminary 1902–03, op. cit.; Annual Report of the Mission Theological Seminary at Marsovan 1905–1906, ABC 16.9.3.,v. 29, no. 44; Theodore Elmer to Barton, Sept. 26, 1910, ibid., v. 42, no. 39; J. C. McNaughton, “Theological Seminary Location,” Apr. 1912, ibid., v. 40, no. 153; resolution by Western Turkey Mission, Apr. 1912, ibid., v. 39, no. 2; White to Barton, Apr. 26, 1912, ibid., v. 46, no. 196; Xenides, “Story,” XV. For Edward Riggs’s comment, “Higher Educational Work Connected with the American Board,” Apr. 2, 1908, ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, no. 54. 32.  Report of Committee on Education, 1906, ibid., v. 27, no. 153. The “Tracy Kindergarten” was begun in 1909 by Tracy’s daughter, Mary. Annual Report of the Marsovan Station, 1910–11, ibid., 39, no. 62. Xenidis, “Story,” XIV. The Prudential Committee affirmed that in western Turkey education was the leading feature of its work. “Annual Survey of Work of the American Board, 1904–1905,”



Notes to Pages 108–114

431

M. H. 101 (1905), 515. For developments in Muslim education, see Lewis, Modern Turkey, 181–83. 33. Charles Tracy, Veranda, 173; idem., “The Outlook for Christ in Asiatic Turkey,” M. H. 102 (1906), 422–24; idem., “Statement of Two Cases Concerning Anatolia College and of Kindred Matters,” Feb., 1904, ABC 16.9.3., v. 27, no. 214; Edward Riggs, “Reminiscences,” 1911, ibid., v. 40, no. 150; enclosure dated Jan. 12, 1912, to White to Barton, Jan. 26, 1912, ibid., v. 46, no. 191; Report of Western Turkey Mission Education Commission, July 7, 1908, ibid., v. 27, no. 157, and report of same commission, July 1910, ibid., v. 39, no. 1; Elmer to Barton, Mar. 11, 1914, ibid., v. 42, no. 59; Sophocles Sirinides, “Glimpses from the Life of Stephanos I. Sirinidis,” 1963, unpublished typescript; Stephanos Sirinides to Prudential Committee, Feb. 12, 1910, ABC 16.9.3., v. 40, no. 130; White to Barton, Apr. 26, 1912, ibid., v. 46, no. 196; Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” II, 2–3. 34.  George White, “The Turkish Awakening,” The Congregationalist and Christian World, Dec. 26, 1908; idem, “Along the Black Sea,” ibid., July 8, 1911; Theodore Elmer to Barton, Jan. 21, 1910, ABC 16.9.3., v. 42, no. 38. For the coups of 1908–1909, Yapp, Near East, 183–90. 35.  Charles C. Tracy, “The Gospel and the College” (Boston, 1898), 3–4; Tracy to J. Smith, July 4, 1901, ABC 16.9.3. v. 38, no. 13. 36.  George Herrick, “A Native Ministry for Turkey,” M. H. 75 (1879), 288–90; Edward Riggs to Judson Smith, Mar. 9, 1889, ABC 16.9.3., v. 26, no. 53. 37.  George White to the Trustees of Anatolia College, Dec. 19, 1913, ibid., v. 46, no. 226; White, Adventuring, 74–76. 38.  Marsovan Station Reports, 1906–07, ABC 16.9.3., v. 29, no. 45; 1907–08, ibid., no. 47; 1910–11, ibid., v. 39, no. 62; White to Barton, Sept. 22, 1913, ibid., v. 46, no. 219; to Bell, Feb. 21, 1917, ibid., no. 306. 39.  Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College, 1908–09. 40.  White to J. L. Barton, Aug. 1, 1914, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 245. 41.  Xenides, “Story” VI, XV. For Ottoman educational classifications, Karpat, Politicization, 98–102; Stone, Academies, 143. 42. Annual Report of Marsovan Station, 1890–91, ABC 16.9.3.,v. 18, no. 17; “Anatolia College Course of Study,” ibid., no. 20; Annual Report of Marsovan Station, 1907–08, ibid., v. 29, no. 47; George White to the Trustees of Anatolia College, Dec. 19, 1913, ibid., v. 46, no. 226; Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College, 1908–09, 20; The Anatolian, 1911–12, 38–42; circular letter from Dana Getchell to former “Home” students, Apr. 21, 1914, ABC 16.5., v. 506, no. 130. 43.  Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College, 1893; 1897; 1905–6; The Anatolian, 1911–12, 38–59; White, Adventuring, 70; Efthymios Couzinos, Twenty-Three Years in Asia Minor (1899–1922) (New York, 1969), 44–45. 44.  Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College, 1897. 45. Anatolia College Annual Report, 1913, ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, no. 78; Report of the Librarian of Anatolia College, Dec. 14, 1914, ibid., no. 86; The Anatolian, 1911–12, 30; 1913–14, 27. 46.  White to Barton, Jan. 2, 1913, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 205; Nov. 13, 1913, ibid., no. 221; Mar. 16, 1914, ibid., no. 231; White to Trustees of Anatolia College, Dec. 19, 1913, ibid., no. 226; The Anatolian, 1911–12, 17–21; 1913–14, 17–18.

432

Notes to Pages 114–121

47.  The department was named for donors Mary H. and Carrie Wickes, sisters from Los Angeles, California. ABC 16.9.3., v. 29, no. 51; Annual Report of Marsovan Station, June 1909–June 1910, ibid., v. 39, no. 58; Annual Report of Anatolia College for 1912, ibid. no. 71. 48. White, Tracy, 45–46; idem, Adventuring, 38, 43–44, 66; Anatolia College Reports, 1912 and 1913, ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, nos. 71, 78; The Anatolian, 1911–12, 59–62; M. H. 108 (1912), 409; Frederick B. Wright, “Anatolia Archeological Club of Marsovan, Asia Minor,” Records of the Past, Washington, DC, v. VIII, Part II, Mar–Apr., 1909, 251–52. 49.  Annual Report of Marsovan Station, Apr. 1905, ABC 16.9.3., v. 29, no. 41; The Anatolian, 1911–12, 32–33; George White to Trustees of Anatolia College, Dec. 19, 1913, op. cit. 50.  Marsovan Station Reports, 1905–06, ABC 16.9.3., v. 29, no. 43; 1906–07 and 1907–08, op. cit.; 1908–09, ibid., no. 50; 1909–10, ibid., v. 39, no. 58; 1910–11, ibid., no. 62; Tracy to Prudential Committee, Dec. 12, 1913, ibid., v. 46, no. 85; Charles T. Riggs, “Historical Sketch of Aintab (Gaziantab) Station” (undated), ABC: “Ms. Histories of Missions,” Houghton Library, Harvard University, Film 89, no. 31, p. 18. Former student Constantine Dimitriadis (also Doubakis) describes conduct awards in his unpublished memoirs, A.C. archives, 22–25. George White’s statement that no students left or were sent away following the rebellion (Adventuring, 67–68) is contradicted by the station reports cited above. 51.  Anatolia College Students’ Hand Book, 1913, Marsovan, Turkey. Cook Boghos Piranian published a cookbook in Armenian in 1914, republished in Turkish in 2008. 52.  Marsovan Station Annual Reports, 1907–08, ABC 16.9.3., v. 29, no. 47; and 1912–13, v. 39, no. 78; Anatolia College Report, 1912, ibid., no. 71; Myra Tracy to Mr. Wiggin, Feb. 18, 1910, ibid., v. 46, no. 101; Xenides, “Story,” XIV; Couzinos, Asia Minor, 39–45. 53.  Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College, Girls Boarding School and Hospital, 1903, 37–54; 1905–06, 43–57; 1908–09, 41–55; The Anatolian, 1911–12, 87–96; 1912– 13, 25; 1913–14, 79–82; Charlotte Willard to the ABCFM Higher Education Committee, Jan. 21, 1913, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 414; to President H. C. King, Oberlin College, Apr. 7, 1915, ibid., no. 418. 54.  The Anatolian, 1911–12, 87–88. 55.  Tracy to Judson Smith, Sept. 20, 1902, ABC 16.9.3., v. 38, no. 26; Marsovan Station Reports, May 1904, ibid., v. 29, no. 40; 1910–11, ibid., v. 39, no. 62; 1913, ibid., no. 77; 1913–14, ibid., no. 84; White to W. W. Peet, Oct. 12, 1912, ibid., v. 46, no. 201; White, Adventuring, 46–48; Dirigil, Well-Protected Domains, 115–34. A delegation of missionary educators presented demands for protection of their schools under “favored nation” treaty rights to President Roosevelt. M. H. 99 (1903), 3–4, 50. The result was a show of U.S. naval force in Turkish waters, which helped eventually to resolve certain pending issues to American satisfaction. Ibid., 100 (1904), 351–52; 101 (1905), 156; 103 (1907), 316; Report by the Political Department of the Western Turkey Mission, 1907, ABC 16.9.3., v. 28, no. 173. For violence involving Armenians in other districts, Roderic H. Davison, “The Armenian Crisis: 1912–1914,” American Historical Review, 53 (April 1948), 481–505. The U.S. Legation in Constantinople was upgraded to Embassy in 1906.



Notes to Pages 121–126

433

56.  Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” 27; White, Adventuring, 73–74. 57.  Methods of Missionary Work Among Moslems, Being those Papers read at the First Missionary Conference of behalf of the Mohammedan World held at Cairo, April 4th–9th, 1906, New York, 1906; James L. Barton, “Moslems in Turkey,”; The One Hundredth Anniversary of the Haystack Prayer Meeting , op. cit., 289–96. 58.  Annual Mission Letter to James L. Barton, July 1908, ABC 16.9.3., v. 27, no. 148; “Report of Committee for Needs of Turkish Missions,” July 1908, ibid., no. 155; White to Barton, Mar. 13, 1912, ibid., v. 46, no. 193; Committee Report from Minutes of Annual Meeting, July 5–12, 1913, ibid., v. 39, no. 3; H. Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” I, 17–18; II, 1–5, 23–26. For new initiatives by the ABCFM to evangelize Muslims, John E. Merrill, “Christian-Muslim Relations in Central Turkey and North Syria, 1900–1940,” ed. by Fred Goodsell, 1956, “Ms. Histories of Missions, Houghton Library, Harvard University Film 89. 59.  George White to J. L. Barton, Feb. 14, 1913, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 208; Anatolia Girls School Report for 1913–14, ibid. v. 39, no. 83. 60. Charles Tracy, “Religious Principles at Anatolia College,” Mar. 3, 1910, ibid., v. 46 (unnumbered, follows no. 23). It bears the note: “Though the above is not an official paper, it expresses the convictions generally prevailing here.” G. White to J. L. Barton, Feb. 14, 1913, ibid., no. 208; The Anatolian, 1911–12, 33. 61. George White to J. L. Barton, Nov. 13, 1913, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 221. White was acting president from the fall of 1913 until his official appointment to the office at the 1914 commencement. 62. Annual Report of the Marsovan Station 1902–1903, Apr. 1, 1903, ibid, v. 29, no. 39; 1906–07, ibid., v. 46, nos. 45, 47; 1913–14, ibid., v. 39, no. 82; White to Barton, Oct. 9, 1913, ibid., no. 220; Director’s Book, A.C. archives. 63.  Marsovan Station Report,1897, ABC 16.9.3., v. 18, no. 82; List of Alumni, ibid., v. 40, no. 207; draft of Anatolia College Bulletin, c. 1916, ibid., no. 242; George E. White, “Agriculture and Industries in Turkey,” in William H. Hall, Reconstruction in Turkey, New York, 1918, 149; Agapides [Greek Evangelical Communities], 43, 47. 64.  George White to J. L. Barton, Nov. 13, and to Anatolia Trustees, Dec. 19, 1913, ABC 19.6.3., v. 46, nos. 221 and 226; Xenides, “Story,” XI. Examples of student composition are found in the replies by ten seniors to a series of questions about religious and educational issues, encl. to Theodore Elmer to Barton, Mar. 28, 1911, ABC 16.9.3., v. 42, no. 40. 65.  The Anatolian, 1911–12, 77; Alice K. Lewis, Shnorhig, An Armenian Story, private publication (1977), 9, 14–15, 40. 66.  Originally Kyriakides, he is listed in the Anatolia archives as Loucas Petrou, following the common practice of using one’s father’s name as a surname. Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College, 1897 and 1903; Chemical and Engineering News, 23 (no. 6), Mar. 25, 1945; Stavros Kaloyiannis, “Lucas Kyrides,” A. C. Newsletter, winter 1979. 67.  M. H. 124 (1928), 147; White, Adventuring, 137. 68. Biographical sketches in Thanassis Aghnides, The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Light of the Treaty of Lausanne (New York, 1964); personal letter from Aghnides to the author, Geneva, Mar. 1, 1976, A.C. archives. There is

434

Notes to Pages 126–132

an Athanasios Aghnides archive in the United Nations Library in Geneva and an oral history in Columbia University’s library. 69.  Personal communication from Raphael’s son, Professor John Demos, Yale University, June 15, 2004; Anatolia College—Report to Annual Meeting, June 22, 1914, ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, no. 82. 70.  Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College, 1908–09, 13; White, Adventuring, 137; Anatolia College, Director’s Book, 14. Aghnides’s works were published in the Columbia University series on Studies in History, Economics and Public Law; Compton to Homer Davis, Oct. 23, 1959, A.C. archives. 71.  Listed as Misak Medzadourian in Anatolia College Director’s Book, 46. 72. H. Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1914, II, 1; Couzinos, Asia Minor, 39; M. H. 107 (1911), 526–27; “What the Changes in Turkey Mean to Us,” op. cit., 469; Tracy to Barton, Apr. 15, 1913, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 74; Feb. 7, 1914, ibid., no. 91; James Barton, Daybreak in Turkey (Boston, 1908). 73.  Annual Report of Marsovan Station, June 1910–June 1911, ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, no. 92; Anatolia College Report to Annual Meeting of W. T. Mission, June 22, 1914, ibid., no. 82. 74.  Report and Catalogue for Anatolia College, 1905–06, 11; Tracy to Barton, May 7, 1908, ABC 16.9.3., v. 38, no. 93; Tracy to friends and relations in Smithfield, Dec. 8, 1909, ibid., no. 110; The Anatolian, 1911–12, 93. 75.  Tracy to Barton, Feb. 24, 1910, and Jan. 5 and Mar. 1, 1911, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, nos. 23, 35 and 41; Anatolia College Report for 1912–1913, ibid., v. 39, no. 78; draft of Anatolia College Bulletin, c. 1916, op. cit.; The Anatolian, 1912–13, 7; ibid., 1913–14, 9; M. H. 108 (1912), 133–34; White, “Along the Black Sea Coast”, op. cit. 76.  Tracy to Barton, Mar. 10, 1910, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no 24. 77.  Tracy to Barton, Aug. 10, 1910, ibid., no. 31; Anatolia College Report for 1912–1913, ibid., v. 39, no. 78; The Anatolian, 1912–13, 6–7, 32; Marden, Jesse K. Marden, 19. 78.  Tracy to Barton, Apr. 28, 1910, and Jan. 23, 1914, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, nos. 28, 89. 79.  The Anatolian, 1911–12, 1913–14 and 1914–15. 80.  Tracy to Judson Smith, Dec. 16, 1901, ABC 16.9.3., v. 38, no. 19; Jan. 25, 1906, ibid., no. 72; to Rev. C. H. Patton, June 12, 1906, ibid., no. 75. 81.  Report and Catalogue of Anatolia College, 1897; 1905–06; 1908–9; Tracy to Barton, Apr. 28, 1910 and Jan. 5, 1911, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, nos. 28 and 35; “A.B.C.F.M. Higher Education Statistics,” May 26, 1910, ibid., v. 40, no. 75; Dr. Pearson’s letter of Oct. 2, 1905, A.C. archives. 82.  Tracy to Barton, Oct. 3, 1904, ABC 16.9.3., v. 38, no. 44; July 20 and Nov. 16, 1912, ibid., v. 46, nos. 62 and 67. Tracy quotation from “Some Points Concerning Work in W. T. Mission,” Oct. 22, 1907, ibid., v. 38 (unnumbered, follows no. 58). Tracy also wrote: “In our view here, it is more and more a certainty that the Prud. Com., overwhelmed with what, to them, is the paramount interest of the general work, cannot take that special interest in any one institution, which its success requires.” To Judson Smith, Jan. 25, 1906, ibid., v. 38, no. 72. Cf., Tracy to Barton, June 21, 1906, ibid., no. 76. G. White to Barton, Mar. 16 and Aug. 1, 1914, ibid., v. 46, nos. 231, 245; Anatolia College Annual Report, 1913, ibid., v. 39, no. 78. For



Notes to Pages 132–139

435

Barton’s efforts to procure funds for ABCFM colleges, Goodsell, Witnesses, 56–62, 232. 83. Marsovan Station Annual Report, May 1904, ABC 16.9.3., v. 29, no. 40; Tracy to Judson Smith, Jan. 25, 1906, ibid., v. 38, no. 72; Anatolia College Report, 1913, ibid., v. 39, no. 78; White, Tracy, 66–67; M. H. 102 (1906), 491. 84.  Tracy to Barton, Feb. 11, 1911, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 40; M. H. 109 (1912), 409–10. 85.  Anatolia College Annual Report, 1912, ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, no. 71; ibid., 1913, no. 78. 86. Anatolia College Annual Report, 1913, ibid., v. 39, no. 78; Report of the Librarian of Anatolia College, Dec. 14, 1914, op. cit.; The Anatolian, 1911–12, 30; 1913–14, 27. 87.  Anatolia College Report to the Annual Meeting of the Western Turkey Mission, June 22, 1914, ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, no. 82; Anatolia Report 1914–1915, ibid., no. 87; circular letter from Dana Getchell, Apr. 21, 1914, ABC 16.5., v. 7., no. 130; The Anatolian, 1914–15, 10. 88.  Anatolia College Report, 1914–1915, op. cit.; Annual report of Anatolia Hospital, 1913–1914, op. cit.; White to Barton, Feb. 9, 1918, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 338. 89.  The Anatolian, 1912–13; Anatolia College Annual Report for 1913, op. cit.; White, Adventuring, 75. 90.  Circular letter from G. E. White and T. A. Elmer, Jan. 12, 1912, op. cit.; Anatolia College Report, 1914–15, op. cit.; White, Adventuring, 79. 91.  ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, nos. 71, 78, 82, op. cit.; Theocharides to D. Getchell, Jan. 15, 1920, ABC 16.5., v. 506, no. 227. 92. Anatolia College Annual Report, June 22, 1914, op. cit.; Anatolia Girls School Report for 1913–14, ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, no. 83; The Orient, Constantinople, July 8, 1914, op. cit.

CHAPTER 4 THE GREAT WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH: TRAGEDIES AND TRANSITIONS (1914–1923) 1. Heyd, “Later Ottoman Empire,” 370–73; Lewis, Modern Turkey, 210–30; Karpat, Politicization, 349–73; Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (New York, 1918), 161–70, 281–89. 2. White, Adventuring, 21–22, 32–69, 79; idem., “The Waxing, the Waning and the New Phase of the Turkish Crescent,” The Bibliotheca Sacra (July 1911), 117–40; “Mohammedanism versus Mohammedans,” M. H. 113 (1917), 65–68; “What Is the Matter with Mohammedanism?” ABC 16.9.3., v. 40, no. 156. Several of his articles on the history and archeology of Asia Minor appeared in Records of the Past (Washington, DC). A number of shorter publications, some bearing his occasional pen name, “Anatolius,” were assembled for “Anatolia Scrapbook, George E. White, 1900–1925,” A.C. archives. 3.  White to Barton, Apr. 27, May 14 and July 1, 1914, ABC 16.9.3, v. 46, nos. 237, 239, 242; William Peet, Constantinople, to Barton, May 18, 1914, ibid., v. 48, no. 143; trans. of letter from Colonel Mehmet, commander of the 93rd Regiment, to

436

Notes to Pages 140–144

the director of Anatolia College (undated), encl. to Peet to Barton, June 13, 1914, ibid., no 157; White to Ambassador Morgenthau, June 6, 1914, enc. to ibid.   4.  White to Barton, Aug. 14, 1914, ibid., v. 46, no. 247; Anatolia College Report for 1914–1915, ibid., v. 39, no. 87; The Anatolian, 1914–15,” 6–10; White, Adventuring, 78–82. U.S. Ambassador Morgenthau intervened with the Ottoman Minister of War to hasten the withdrawal of troops from the hospital. Peet to Barton, Aug. 31, 1914, ABC 16.9.3., v. 48, no. 178.   5.  James L. Barton, “Turkey and the Abolition of the Capitulations and Extraterritoriality,” M. H. 110 (1914), 495–97; Morgenthau, Story, 112–22; Samuel T. Dutton, “Education in the Turkish Empire,” in William H. Hall, ed., Reconstruction in Turkey (New York, 1918), 30–32. For Ottoman Foreign Ministry instructions to provincial officials for enforcing the abrogation, see Philip Hoffman to Dept. of State, June 15, 1916, no. 1431, ABC 16.5, v. 8, no. 82.   6.  White to Barton, Nov. 11 and Dec. 7, 1914, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, nos. 260, 262; White to W. W. Peet, Constantinople, Dec. 5, 1914, ibid., no. 261; trans. of educational regulations, Dec. 1, 1914, ibid., v. 40, no. 186; M. H. 111 (1915), 103, 128. The Ottoman government complained to the U.S. ambassador that Anatolia continued to require church attendance of Muslim students. Peet to Barton, Mar. 17 and May 31, 1915, ABC 16.9.3., v. 48, nos. 213, 249.   7.  White to Barton, Mar. 9 and June 19, ibid., v. 46, nos. 270, 283; Anatolia College Report for 1914–1915, op. cit.   8.  Roderic H. Davison, “The Armenian Crisis: 1912–14,” American Historical Review, 53 (Apr. 1948), 481–85; Hovannisian, “Armenian Question,” 233–38; idem, “Armenia’s Road to Independence,” in ibid., 279.  9. Eliot, Turkey in Europe, 14, 173; Morgenthau, Story, 301–63; Stephen H. Astourian, “Modern Turkish Identity and the Armenian Genocide, from Prejudice to Racist Nationalism,” in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit, 1999), 23–49; For the extensive literature on the subject, Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian Holocaust: A Bibliography Relating to the Deportations, Massacres, and Dispersion of the Armenian People, 1915–1923 (Cambridge, MA, 1980). 10. Arnold Toynbee, ed., The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–16: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce (London, 1916). Frances Gage and Ioannes Xenides also submitted separate reports from Ankara, nos. 95, 96, ibid., 382–87. The volume includes an assessment of the massacres by the editor, Toynbee, 627–53. A key to the names concealed in the original publication was given limited distribution the same year. For a detailed commentary, Ara Sarafian, “The Archival Trail, Authentication of the Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–16,” in Hovannisian, ed., Remembrance and Denial 51–65. The items by Gage and Peter are partly or wholly identical to reports they submitted to the U.S. Embassy, U.S. Despatches, 867.4016/220 and 252. Cf. Hilmar Kaiser, ed., Marsovan 1915: The Diaries of Bertha Morley, 2nd ed. (Reading, UK, 2000). 11.  For the message to Ambassador Morgenthau, Carl C. Compton, The Morning Cometh: 45 Years with Anatolia College (New Rochelle, NY, 1986), 6–10. The Ottoman government issued orders sparing Armenians of Protestant and Catholic faith, probably in response to international pressure, but they were received late



Notes to Pages 145–147

437

and generally ignored. No such distinctions appear to have influenced Turkish behavior in the Marsovan region. H. Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” III, 9; reports from Ankara, no. 95 by Ioannes Xenidis and no. 96 by Frances Gage, op. cit.; Kaiser, ed., Morley, 19, 48–50, 77, 80. 12.  Report by U.S. Consular Agent Peter from Samsun, No. 257, Aug. 26, 1915, encl. to Morgenthau to Secretary of State, Oct. 26, 1915, no. 566, U.S. Despatches, 867.4016/220, National Archives. Professors Daghlian and Manissadjian, having German relatives, won exemption for themselves and their wives and daughters following German intervention and their conversion to Islam. They found haven in a German agricultural colony near Marsovan and after the war emigrated to the United States. (Personal communication from granddaughters Susan Daghlian and Amy Manis Bauer.) H. A. Arozian, instructor in chemistry and physics and a naturalized U.S. citizen, departed for America but was seized in Ankara and vanished, together with Anatolia’s registrar, H. N. Jenazian, and the Protestant pastor from Marsovan. White, Adventuring, 83–84; Xenidis, “Story,” XXII, XXIII. For a brief profile of Garabed Kojayan by an admiring student, Couzinos, Asia Minor, 44–46. Cf. Kaiser, ed., Morley, 52–55, 68–69; statement by Dana K. Getchell, head of Anatolia’s preparatory school, quoted in George Horton, The Blight of Asia (Indianapolis, 1926), chapter XXXI; M. H. 117 (1921), 208–10; Raymond Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide, A Complete History (London and New York, 2011), 452–54. Elmer quotation from Toynbee, ed., Treatment of Armenians, no. 87. 13.  Shnorhig Klydjian was an alumna of the Girls School and music instructor there from 1908 to 1915. Alice K. Lewis, Shnorhig, An Armenian Story, private publication (1977), 23–32. For an account by Charlotte Willard, to Mrs. Harris, Sivas, Aug. 30, 1915, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 421; by Frances Gage, Pye, ed., Willard, 155–67; by George White, Ara Sarafian, ed., “Turkish Atrocities,” Statements of American Missionaries on the Destruction of Christian Communities in Ottoman Turkey, 1915–1917, compiled by James L. Barton (Ann Arbor, MI, 1998), 74–86. The Morley quotation is from “Emmanuel,” in Pye, ed., Willard, 93–94. Pessimistic expectations of the two teachers’ efforts were voiced by U.S. Consular Agent William Peter in U.S. Despatches, no. 257, op. cit.; by German observers and by Mission Treasurer W. Peet in Peet to Barton, Aug. 27, 1915, ABC 16.9.3., v. 48, no. 268. “Vali” was the title of the governor of a province (vilayet), e.g., Sivas; “Mutasarif” of a constituent region (sanjak), e.g., Amasia; “Kaimakam” of a district (kaza), e.g., Marsovan. Lewis, Modern Turkey, 388. 14.  For efforts by the embassy, Compton, Morning Cometh (1986), 10. For indications that bribery may have been used to free the girls, M. H. 111 (1915), 581; Anatolia College Report, 1914–1915, ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, no. 87; C. Willard to Miss Lamson, Sivas, Aug. 25, 1915, ibid., v. 46, no. 291; White to Peet, Dec. 20, 1915, ibid., v. 48, no. 314. 15.  Report of Marsovan Station 1915–1916, ibid., v. 40, no. 171; White to E. F. Bell, Sept. 8, 1915, ibid., v. 46, no. 289; White to Barton, Oct. 11, 1915, ibid., no. 292; Peet to Barton, May 18, 1914 and Aug. 27, 1915, ibid., v. 48, nos. 143, 268; Compton, Morning Cometh (1986), 10–11; Xenidis, “Story,” XXIV. 16.  Peet to Barton, Dec. 14, 1915, ABC 16.9.3., v. 48, no. 287. 17.  White to Barton, Aug. 31 and Feb. 7, 1916, ibid., v. 46, nos. 286, 296; White, Adventuring, 84–88.

438

Notes to Pages 147–152

18.  White to Barton, Oct. 26, 1915, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 293; Peet to Barton, Nov. 17, 1915, ibid., v. 48, no. 284; Kaiser, ed., Morley, 77; White, Adventuring, 86–87. Quote from Report of Marsovan Station 1915–1916, op. cit. 19.  White to Barton, Dec. 6, 1915, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 294. 20. “Statement by G. E. White re requisitioning of Marsovan property and departure of missionaries for Const. by Turkish Govt.,” filed at U.S. Embassy, Constantinople May 25, 1916, ibid., unnumbered; White, Boston, to Barton, July 18, 1916, ibid., no. 299. Marden gave a parallel account, undated, forwarded to the State Dept. by U.S. Minister, M. Egan, Constantinople, July 3, 1916, ibid., v. 6, no. 184. For the embassy’s protest and response, Philip Hoffman to Halil Bey, May 29, 1916, and Hoffman to Secretary of State, no. 1671, Aug. 14, 1916, ibid., nos. 179 and 192. Cf., Dana Getchell to Barton, July 1, 1916, ibid., v. 42, no. 201; White, Adventuring, 89–90. 21.  During the previous months, William Peet had reported at least twice to ABCFM foreign secretary Barton about the heavy toll on George White from the events in Marsovan and his urgent need for a change. Aug. 27 and Dec. 14, 1915, ABC 16.9.3., v. 48, nos. 268, 287. Alice Tupper, the Canadian nurse serving at the Marsovan hospital, joined the Constantinople Girls School at this time but subsequently returned to America in poor health. White to Barton, Feb. 9, 1918, ibid., no. 338; Marden, Jesse Krikore Marden, 25. 22.  Report of Marsovan Station 1915–1916, op. cit.; Peet to Barton, June 2 and July 21, 1916, ABC 16.9.3., v. 48, nos. 356, 362; Getchell to Barton, July 1, 1916, ibid., v. 42, no. 201; Edward L. Smith, New York, to Barton, May 24, 1916, with encl. from George R. Montgomery, Constantinople to Smith, Apr. 27, 1916, ABC 16.5, v. 6, nos. 7, 8. Gage and Willard had apparently obtained some tentative consent from Minister of Interior Talaat Bey for the girls to leave Turkey. Statement by Dr. J. K. Marden, forwarded to Dept. of State by Minister M. Egan, Constantinople, July 3, 1916, op. cit. 23.  Kaiser, ed., Morley, 18; Emma Zbinden, “With Her Lantern in Her Hand,” Pye, ed., Willard, 111. 24.  Willard to Miss Lamson, Marsovan, Aug. 2, 1916, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 423; Peet to Barton, Aug. 21, Sept. 15 and Dec. 8, 1916, ibid., v. 48, nos. 373, 378, 411; Susie R. Getchell, Marsovan, to Peet, Dec. 12, 1916, ibid., no. 418; M. H. 113 (1917), 187. 25.  Frances Gage, Marsovan, to Alice Tupper, Constantinople, Feb. 18, 1917, ABC 16.9.3., no. 437; Dana K. Getchell, “Memories of Miss Willard—The War Years, 1914–1918,” in Pye, ed., Willard, 105–7; Emma Zbinden, “Lantern,” ibid., 111–13. 26.  Peet to Barton, Jan. 11, 1917, ABC 16.9.3., v. 48, no. 428. 27.  Charlotte Willard, Marsovan, Nov. 8 and 17, 1916 (no addressee), ibid., v. 46, no. 425; Gage to W. Peet, early 1917, ibid., no. 451; to U.S. Consul General G. B. Ravndal, Jan. 10, 1917, ibid., v. 42, no. 180; George White, Minneapolis, to Mrs. K. W. Ucker, Oct. 10, 1917, ibid., v. 46, no. 326. 28.  Zbinden, “Lantern,” 113–117. 29.  Peet to Barton, Dec. 23, 1916, and Oct. 6, 1917, ABC 16.9.3., v. 48, nos. 415, 504; Henry Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” III, 19–21.



Notes to Pages 153–159

439

30. Telegram from Willard to Barton, ABC 16.9.3, v. 42, no. 181; M. H. 113 (1917), 445–46. Quote from Toynbee, ed., Treatment of Armenians, no. 88, 355. Cf., Pye, ed., Willard, 129–30. 31.  Peet to Barton, Oct. 6, 1917, op. cit. 32.  White to Barton, Minneapolis, Dec. 10, 1918, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 373. On another occasion White wrote: “Really I have never felt more lonely than among my own people in this country or more in need of council [sic] than in the present unusual conditions.” To Barton, July 17, 1918, ibid., no. 354. 33.  White, Minnesota, to Bell, June 2, 1917, ibid., no. 318; White to Barton, Dec. 10, 1918, op. cit.; M. H. 123 (1927), 277; White, Adventuring, 91–93; White, Tracy. The Armenian Relief Committee became the Armenian and Syrian Relief Committee before changing its name to the American Committee for Relief in the Near East (ACARNE) and finally evolving into the Near East Relief (NER). James L. Barton, The Story of Near East Relief (1915–1930): An Interpretation. (New York, 1930). 34.  “A Statement to the Trustees of Anatolia College from President White,” Dec. 16, 1916, ABCFM, 16.9.3., v. 40, no. 239; White to Barton, Nov. 5, 1918, ibid., v. 46, no. 361; MBTAC, Dec. 16, 1916; M. H.113 (1917), 362–65. 35.  “A Statement to the Trustees of Anatolia College from President White,” op. cit.; draft of Anatolia College bulletin (undated, approx. Dec. 1916), ABC 16.9.3., v. 40, no. 242; MECBT, Jan. 23, 1917; White to Barton, July 4, 1917, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 320; Mar. 13, 1918, ibid., no. 343; and Nov. 5, 1918, no. 361, op. cit.; George White, “Modern Implements for Ancient Land,” Farm Implement News (Jan. 1910); idem, “Reconstruction in the Near East,” encl. to White to Barton, Oct. 15, 1917, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 327; idem, “Agriculture and Industries in Turkey,” and “Tentative Plan for an Anatolia Demonstration Farm,” William H. Hall, ed., Reconstruction in Turkey (New York, 1918), 132–69. 36.  White to Barton, Jan. 5, July 15 and 18, 1917; Nov. 30, Dec. 10, 1918, ABC 16.9.3. v. 46, nos. 330, 350, 353, 367, 371, 372; circular letter, Dec. 12, 1918, ibid., no. 377; M. H. 113 (1917), 395; ibid. 123 (1927), 256–58; Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy 1810–1927 (Minneapolis, 1971), 90–97. 37.  M. H. 115 (1919), 349–50; H. Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” III, 29; Barton, Story, 107–19. 38.  C. Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” II, 5; Willard to Dr. Chambers, Aug. 5, 1918, ABC 16.9.3., no. 426; M. H. 115 (1919), 285–87; 123 (1927), 277–78; Pye, ed., Willard, 174–75; Barton, Story, 111. 39.  Ibid., 118–19, 190; George White, “Relief Work in Marsovan,” Dec. 1, 1919, ABC 16.9.3., v. 40, no. 267; Pye, Willard, 176–79. 40. Pye, ed., Willard, 124–26; White, Constantinople, to Enoch Bell, Apr. 19, 1919, ABC 16.9.3., v. 46, no. 383; White, Marsovan, to Charles Wilhelm, Omaha, Nebraska, July 19, 1919, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 273; Report of Marsovan Relief Unit, July 31, 1919, ABC 16.9.3., v. 39, no. 88; Haig Baronian, Barefoot Boy From Anatolia (1983), 47, A.C. archives. 41. White to J. W. Hawley, Jan. 13, 1920, ABC 16.5. v. 7, no. 124; Managers of Anatolia College to Board of Trustees, Boston, July 29, 1920, ibid., no. 99;

440

Notes to Pages 159–162

President’s Report, Jan. 31, 1922, ibid., no. 110; The Anatolian, Bulletin for the Year 1919–20, Marsovan, May 1, 1920. 42.  The Managers of Anatolia College to the Board of Trustees, July 29, 1920, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 99; White to Compton, Oct. 27, 1919, ibid., no. 188; to Getchell, Nov. 18, 1920, ibid., no. 369; President’s Report, Jan. 31, 1922, op. cit. Carl Compton recounted the adventures he and his wife experienced in Russia from 1917 to 1919 in Carl C. Compton, The Morning Cometh: 45 Years with Anatolia College. Supplemented by Carl Compton’s Letters to His Wife Ruth (Athens, 2008), 73–87. 43.  White to Bell, Apr. 19, 1919, op. cit.; “Anatolia College Plant and Evaluations,” ABC 16.5 v. 7, no. 87. Dana Getchell submitted to the trustees an ambitious “Statement of College Needs,” totaling $1,361,700, including an endowment of $600,000. Jan. 17, 1920, ibid., no. 88. For Getchell’s contacts with the State Department, to Barton, Aug. 7, 1920, ibid., no. 173. 44.  George White to Anatolia trustees, July 25, 1919, enclosing financial plan for a small practical farm, ibid., nos. 97, 98; minutes of the annual meeting of the A.C. trustees, Feb. 3, 1920, ibid., no. 86. 45.  Churchill King and Charles R. Crane were trustees of the NER. The commission’s formal title was the International Commission on Mandates in Turkey; however, only U.S.-appointed representatives actually participated. The reports of the two commissions arrived late in the course of events and seem not to have greatly influenced U.S. policy toward Turkey and Armenia. Daniel, Philanthropy, 160–64; Grabill, Diplomacy, passim; Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris, the Armenian Genocide and America’s Response (New York, 2003), 349–58. 46.  White to Hawley, Jan. 13, 1920, op. cit. 47. Barton, Story, 118–19. Discussing the removal of “adopted” Christian children from Muslim families to mission orphanages, Henry Riggs notes: “many a missionary found himself hated as never before.” “Turkey, 1910–1942,” III, 34. Even though the ABCFM professed its neutrality on political issues (M. H. 117 [1921], 261–62), unguarded expressions of anti-Turkish sentiment are found frequently in missionary correspondence and even in the Board’s own official organ, the Missionary Herald, ibid., 357–58; 118 (1922), 347–48. See circular letter by Dana Getchell to “graduates and former students,” May 10, 1921, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 135. Cf. Daniel, Philanthropy, 160–61; Secil Akgun, “The Turkish Image in the Reports of American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire,” The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, v. 13, no. 2 (1989), 91–105. 48.  White to Commissioner G. B. Ravndal, Constantinople, June 20, 1919, encl. to Ravndal to Secretary of State, no. 229, July 8, 1919, U.S. Despatches, 867.00/900; White, Constantinople, to Bell, June 24, 1919, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 279; White, Adventuring, 103–5. White was not alone in expressing indignation at the lack of any evidence of guilt or shame on the part of Turks. James Barton, visiting Marsovan in May 1919, voiced similar sentiments. “Report of Trip across Armenia and Anatolia,” June 27, 1919, ABC 16.5, v. 6, no. 101; also, Barton to Strong, May 27, 1919, no. 95. Former Anatolia student D. E. Theodore described how Greeks in the nearby town of Maden were emboldened by the presence of Allied troops at Merzifon to retain their arms and defy Turkish authority. Theodore, Sacrificials, 47. 49. Lewis, Modern Turkey, 239–42; Yapp, Near East, 307–9; Arnold Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey (Boston and New York, 1922), 74–84; Michael Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, Greece in Asia Minor 1919–1922 (London, 1998).



Notes to Pages 162–167

441

50. White, Adventuring, 103–4; Peet to Barton, Sept. 20, 1919, op. cit.; White, “Relief Work in Marsovan,” Dec. 1, 1919, ABC 16.9.3., v. 40, no. 267; Mears, Turkey: 1908–1923, 558–66. For a detailed account of the nationalist movement, Andrew Mango, Atatürk (London, 1999), 185–357. 51. White, Adventuring, 105–6. The U.S. Consular Officer at Samsun reported the many restrictions introduced by the nationalist authorities, causing him to resign his post. S. P. Tuck, Jr., Constantinople, to Sec. of State, Jan. 27, 1921, no. 43, U.S. Despatches, 867.00/1382. 52.  Peet to Barton, Constantinople, Sept. 20, 1919, ABC 16.9.3, v. 48, no. 602; S. P. Tuck, Jr., Samsun, July 9, 1920, to American High Commissioner, encl. to Adm. Mark Bristol, Constantinople, to Sec. of State, July 22, 1920, U.S. Despatches, 867.00/1381. 53.  White to Barton, Constantinople, Apr. 14, 1921, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 295B; White to Getchell, Constantinople, Apr. 9, 1921, ibid., no. 375; President’s Report, Jan. 31, 1922, op. cit.; White, Adventuring, 106. In order to circumvent barriers to foreigners owning property, Anatolia had purchased certain items in the name of its Armenian teachers, including the home where Professor Hagopian lived. This circumstance created legal ambiguity when Turkish authorities sought to register, and confiscate, Armenian properties in 1915. Kaiser, ed. Morley, 68. The London Times reported that Saduk Bey seized the opportunity of the outbreak of violence in Merzifon in July 1921 to murder two Armenians to whom he owed money; Toynbee, Western Question, 277. 54. Yapp, Near East, 310–17; Mears, Turkey: 1908–1923, 634–42; Daniel, Philanthropy, 165; Grabill, Diplomacy, 240–46; Richard G. Hovannisian, “The Fate of Sebastia in the Aftermath of Genocide,” in Hovannisian, ed. Armenian Sebastia, op. cit., 426–61; J. K. Hassiotis, “Shared Illusions: Greek-Armenian Co-operation in Asia Minor and the Caucasus (1917–1922),” in Greece and Great Britain During World War I (Thessaloniki, 1985), 193–210; A. A. Pallis, [“Ethnic Migration and Expulsions of Hellenism” (1912–1924)], [Bulletin of the Center of Asia Minor Studies], vol. 1 (Athens, 1977), 75–88. 55.  Report by George White to U.S. High Commissioner, Admiral Mark Bristol, entitled “The Marsovan Affair,” (April 1, 1921), ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 113; President’s Report, Jan. 31, 1922, op. cit., with the March 21 expulsion order; Theodore, Sacrificials, 50–51; White, Adventuring, 106–10; Compton, Morning Cometh (1986), 32–34; The Yeni Gun (New Day) newspaper in Ankara, in an article entitled “Not a School but a Hearth of Conspiracy,” charged that Greek youths killed Zeki Ketani and that the Greek Club “Pontus” at Anatolia promoted Greek irredentist schemes (undated, ABC 16.5. v. 7, no. 114). For Greek dissident groups in the Pontus, Georgios K. Valavanis, [Contempory General History of the Pontus], 2nd ed. (Thessaloniki, 1986). 56. Compton, Morning Cometh (1986), 1–29; President White’s Report, Jan. 31, 1922, op. cit. 57. Mango, Atatürk, 212–13, 227, 303, 330–31, 383. 58. Compton, Morning Cometh (1986), 34–42; Donald M. Hosford, “Brief Memorandum of Recent Events in Northern Anatolia. Particularly at Marsovan,” Dec. 6, 1921, U.S. Despatches, 867.00/1500, National Archives.

442

Notes to Pages 168–175

59. The sources are not all in agreement about the individual victims and other particulars. This account relies primarily upon President’s Report, Jan. 31, 1922, op. cit.; and Efthymios Couzinos (a member of the Greek Literary Society and student friend of Ananiades), Asia Minor, 41–43, 88–92, 101–106. George White at one point referred to a Dadurian among those arrested (to Getchell, Constantinople, Apr. 9, 1921, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 375). For Pastor Pavlides, Agapides, [Evangelical Communities], 76–77. Mango indicates that the “Independence Tribunals,” handed down about 1,000 death sentences during the war, Atatürk, 331. 60. Barton, Story, 338; M. H. 118 (1922), 366–67; Fanny G. Noyes, “My Comrade,” in Pye, Willard, 135–40; Compton, Morning Cometh (1986), 41, 45–50; Baronian, Barefoot, 77. The two students who were hidden were Efthymios N. Kouzoujakoglou (later Couzinos) and Anastasios Anastasiades. Couzinos, Asia Minor, 130–31. 61.  White to Getchell, April 14, 1921, ABC 16.5., v. 7, no. 376; Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Trustees of Anatolia College, Jan. 31, 1922. 62.  Ibid.; White, Adventuring, 111–12; White, “Constantinople and the Slav,” M. H. 118 (1922), 136–37; ibid., 100; C. Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” II, 5. 63.  G. B. Ravndal, “Capitulations,” in Mears, Turkey: 1908–1923, 430–47; White to Barton, Thessaloniki, Apr. 29, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 314; Compton, Morning Cometh (1986), 42–43; Hosford, “Recent Events in Northern Anatolia;” Sec. Hughes to Moore, July 20, 1922, M. H. 118 (1922), 346; Grabill, Diplomacy, 260–61. 64.  L. S. Stavrianos, The Balkans Since 1453 (New York, 1958), 584–91; Harry J. Psomiades, The Eastern Question: The Last Phase, 2nd ed. (New York, 2000), 27–51. 65.  M. H. 118 (1922), 477–78; 119 (1923), 390–91; Grabill, Diplomacy, 264–67; Psomiades, Last Phase, 53–61; Thanassis Aghnides, The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Light of the Treaty of Lausanne (New York, 1964), 30. 66.  Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” III, 1–2, 44–45; James L. Barton, “What of the Future in Turkey?” M. H. 119 (1923), 390–91; idem, “The Problem of Turkey,” ibid., 191; Bierstadt, Betrayal, 262–65. 67.  M. H. 118 (1922), 477–78; H. Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” III, 44–45; IV, 13, 19–21. 68. Stavrianos, Balkans, 390. One commentator estimated Turkish Muslim casualties in World War I at over 800,000. Mears, Turkey: 1908–1923, 582. 69. James Barton, “The Problem of Turkey,” op.cit., 235; H. Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,”, III, 32, IV, 14–19. 70.  “Not Time to Withdraw,” M. H. 118 (1922), 347–48; ibid., 119 (1923), 332–33; for Barton quote, “Have We a Mandate for Turkey?” ibid., 282–83; idem., “What of the Future of Turkey?” ibid., 390–91; E. W. Riggs, “The American Board and the Turks,” The Muslim World, 14, no. 1 (Jan. 1924), 1–4; H. Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” IV, 4. 71.  White to Barton, Apr. 14, 1921, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 295B; M. H. 118 (1922), 128. The new theological school operated only two years in Istanbul before relocating in Athens. 72.  Barton to “Dear Home People,” Nov. 18, 1922, ABC 16.5, v. 5, no. 204. White to Getchell from Istanbul, Apr. 9, 1921, ibid., no. 375. 73. White, Adventuring, 113; Barton, Story, 161–62; J. Riggs Brewster, “What About the Future in Salonica?” M. H. 118 (1922), 498.



Notes to Pages 176–182

443

74. Compton, Morning Cometh (1986), 58. 75. White, Adventuring, 113; John Iatrides, “Missionary Educators and the Asia Minor Disaster: Anatolia College’s Move to Greece,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, v. 4, no. 2 (Oct. 1986), 143–57. 76. White, Adventuring, 115–17; MBTAC, Dec. 18, 1923. 77. For a reliable listing of all male students, Director’s Book, A.C. archives. White lists male graduates, Adventuring, 132. The estimate of 10 percent natural deaths is based upon proportional figures for graduates in The Anatolian, 1911–12, 76–83. Cf. Bruce Clark, Twice A Stranger (London, 2006), 13. For Anastas Lazarides, Charles T. Riggs, “The Work of the American Board among the Greeks.” For Haralambos Sideropoulos, Kalfas, Antonis G., and Paris A. Papageorgiou, [The Evangelical Community of Katerini (1923–2000)] (Katerini, 2001), 41. “Ninth Annual Report of Rev. C.T. Papadopoulos, Missionary to the Greek People in the United States and Minister of the First Greek Protestant Church of Chicago,” 1917. For Mouradouglou and Kyriakou, The Anatolia College News, v. II (Nov. 1930), 7, 12, A.C. archives. For Lagoudakis, Homer Davis, The Story of Athens College (Athens, 1992), 214, 297; Robert Keeley, The Colonels’ Coup and the American Embassy (University Park, PA, 2010), 91.

CHAPTER 5 NEW BEGINNINGS IN THESSALONIKI, GREECE (1923–1924) 1.  For English-language accounts, Apostolos Vacalopoulos, A History of Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki, 1972); Mark Mazower, Salonika, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950 (London, 2004). 2.  Evangelos A. Hekimoglou, [Thessaloniki, Turkish Rule and the Interwar Period] (Thessaloniki, 1995), 207–34, 330; quote from H. G. Dwight, “Saloniki,” National Geographic Magazine, v. 30, July–Sept. 1916, 224. 3.  Alan Palmer, The Gardeners of Salonika (New York, 1965); Stavrianos, Balkans, 591. 4.  Hekimoglou [Thessaloniki], 388. 5. Hekimoglou, [Thessaloniki], 377–88; Dimitri Pentzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and its Impact on Greece (Paris and The Hague, 1962), 125–40; Vilma Hastaoglou-Martinidis, “On the State of the Jewish Community of Salonica after the Fire of 1917,” in I. K. Hassiotis, ed., The Jewish Communities of Southeastern Europe (Thessaloniki, 1997), 169; Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Documents on the History of the Greek Jews (Athens, 1998), 29–30. For a portrayal of Thessaloniki’s ethnic diversity before the Balkan Wars by a member of one of its Jewish families that departed about this time, Leon Sciaky, Farewell to Salonica: Portrait of an Era (New York, 1946). 6.  For comprehensive accounts of the resettlement of refugees in Greece, Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange; Henry Morgenthau, I Was Sent to Athens (New York, 1929); Elizabeth Kontogiorgi, Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Rural Settlement of Refugees 1920–1930 (Oxford and New York, 2006).

444

Notes to Pages 183–188

 7. Douglas Babington, “Hemingway’s Wartime Ritual of Retreat,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, v. 4, n. 2 (Oct. 1986), 85–97; Melville Chater, “History’s Greatest Trek,” National Geographic Magazine, 48, no. 5 (Nov., 1925), 533–90; Mears, Greece Today, 49–50. Quotation from Esther P. Lovejoy, Certain Samaritans (New York, 1927), 221. The figure for Thessaloniki refugees is given by George White, Adventuring, 114. One estimate of Muslim refugees to Turkey between 1912 and 1925 is 761,504. Pallis, [“Racial Migration”], 86.  8. Quote from Annual Report of Salonica Station, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 111A. Cf., White, Adventuring, 112–14.  9. White, Adventuring, 118–19; Fry, “Greece,” 127–28, 131–42; Marden, Jesse Krekore Marden, 35; Barton, Story, 161–72. For the work in Greece by the American Women’s Hospitals, Lovejoy, Certain Samaritans. 10.  MBTAC, Dec. 18, 1923. 11. Harold B. Allen, Come Over Into Macedonia (New Brunswick, NJ, 1943), 165–66; Kontogeorgi, Population Exchange, 266–78; White to Barton, June 13 and July 23, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, nos. 318, 327. 12.  MBTAC, October 2, 1924. 13.  Despite withdrawing from Greece in the 1830s, the American Board had continued to back the efforts there of a single representative, Dr. Jonas King, until 1869. M. H. 107 (1911), 102. 14.  Fry, “Greece,” 142; J. Riggs Brewster, “The Bible in Greece,” Nov. 17, 1921, ABC 16.5, v. 8, no. 99; idem., “Touring in No–Man’s Land,” Mar. 29, 1924, ibid., v. 5, no. 197. Cf. Frazee, Orthodox Church, 136–39; George White, “Hope for the Greeks, The Need for Democracy in Hellas and Asia Minor,” The Congregationalist (July 12, 1917). 15. Frank D. Kalopothakes, “Greek Protestantism,” trans. from the French monthly, L’action Protestante (Nov. 1927), in Charles Riggs, “The Work of the American Board among the Greeks,” 24–30; M. H. 107 (1911), 113; White to Barton, Apr. 29, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 314. 16.  Rev. H. Henry House, “Salonika in Macedonia,” M. H. 91 (1895), 353–57; Report of Salonica Station, Apr. 13, 1906–May 2, 1907, ABC 16.9, no. 84. George White noted that before the Balkan Wars, Salonica station was essentially a Bulgarian mission. To Barton, Apr. 17, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 306; White to Barton, Apr. 24, 1924, ibid., no. 309. 17.  George Horton, American Consulate, Saloniki, to Secretary of State, Feb. 27, 1919, no. 369, in ABC 16.5, v. 6, no. 238; attached memorandum from General Paraskevopoulos to U.S. Consulate, Feb. 19, 1919, ibid., no. 239; Henry Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” III, 47–49; Ethel B. Brewster (Mrs. J. R.), “From Salonika, Greece,” M. H. 118 (1922), 242. Cf. Brenda Marder, Stewards of the Land: The American Farm School and Greece in the Twentieth Century (Macon, GA, 2004), 77, 124–25. 18.  Sept. 22, 1919, ABC 16.5, v. 5, no. 180; White, Adventuring, 116. The Orthodox Bishop of Athens reflected the unfriendly view of missionary influence in an interview with Estia newspaper, Mar. 30, 1919 (ABC 16.5, v. 6, no. 284). American Board Secretary James Barton, during a visit to Bulgaria that same year, recorded the many expressions of gratitude toward American missionaries. He hoped the Allied Powers would not be too hard on that nation in the peace settlement. “They are industrious, sober, physically strong people eager for modern education, reli-



Notes to Pages 189–194

445

gious liberty and national righteousness. They are well worth working for as the leading race in the Balkans.” Extract of letter, July 7, 1919, ibid., no. 98. 19.  White to Barton, Apr. 29, 1924, op. cit. 20.  M. H. 107 (1911), 113; Fry, “Greece,” in American Philanthropy, 127, 136–42; ibid., Appendix B, 286–87; J. Riggs Brewster, “What About the Future in Salonica?” M. H. 118 (1922), 498. For illiteracy estimates, George Th. Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece, 1922–1936 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), 292–93. Cf., Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 252–52; International Survey of the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Association (New York, 1931), 286–88. 21.  White to Barton, Apr. 19, 1924, op. cit.; and June 20, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 320; MBTAC, Nov. 17, 1927; White, Adventuring, 114, 122–23. 22.  White to Barton, Apr. 24, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 309. 23.  Aghnides forwarded his correspondence with Venizelos, including English translations, and that statesman’s recommendation, to the author, with explanatory notes, Sept. 29 and Oct. 25, 1977. A.C. archives. 24.  The Ministry’s decision of Jan. 8 was relayed to White Jan. 22 by Minister K. Spyrides. At this time, the American Collegiate Institute for Girls (later Pierce College), founded as an American Board school in Smyrna in 1875, also secured permission to relocate near Athens. ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 101; White, Adventuring, 123. U.S. recognition of Greece’s new republican government in early 1924 may have influenced the favorable outcome. Louis P. Cassimatis, American Influence in Greece, 1917–1929 (Kent, OH, 1988), 104–6. For a well–documented account of the permit issue, Iatrides, “Anatolia College’s Move to Greece,” 148–154. 25.  H. Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” IV, 13–21. The argument for secular education by American religious organizations in Turkey was advanced by the noted educational theorist, John Dewey, quoted by Ross, et al., eds., American Philanthropy, 162–63. Cf., Stone, Academies, 263–68; Daniel, Philanthropy, 171–76; U.S. diplomat George Horton framed the dilemma faced by American missionaries in sharp terms. Blight of Asia (Indianapolis, 1926), chapters xxx, xxxi. 26. Kaiser, ed., Morley, xii; C. Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” II, 6; Pye, Willard, 182–84. 27.  “View of those at the Home Base in regard to A. C.” Though without signature or date, this item was almost certainly written by Willard. The text cited here is a copy bearing the letterhead of the American Board Mission, Salonica, with a penned notation: “From Marsovan. Received by Mr. Pye, and forwarded Dec. 27, 1923. George E. White.” ABC 16.5., v. 7, no. 116. The same text is quoted from White’s copy in Barton to Trustees of A.C., Mar. 17, 1924, ibid., no. 102, and cited elsewhere in White’s correspondence. 28.  July 9, 1924, ABC 16.5., v. 7, no. 121. 29.  Charlotte Willard forwarded to Barton a copy of her remarks at the conference and the committee’s report, ibid., no. 122. 30.  White to Barton, Jan. 15, Mar. 14, 25 and 26, June 20, July 28, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, nos. 300, 303, 304, 312, 319, 328; “notes for discussion,” signed by White, Feb. 16, 1924, ibid., no. 117; idem, “Regarding the future of Anatolia College,” n.

446

Notes to Pages 195–201

d., ibid., no. 119; Dana Getchell, “Reasons Why Anatolia College Should Locate in Greece,” n.d., ibid., no. 120; White, Adventuring, 122. 31.  George White “To Each Trustee,” ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 101. Though without indication of place or date, the report was evidently prepared in Boston shortly before the May 1925 meeting. Cf. Iatrides, “Anatolia College’s Move to Greece,” 153–54. The ABCFM missions in Turkey were consolidated in late 1924 into a single Turkey Mission. 32.  MBTAC, May 26, 1925; White, Adventuring, 123–24. 33.  Ibid.; White to Barton, Jan. 15, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 300; MBTAC, May 26, 1925. 34.  MBTAC, Jan. 31 and May 23, 1922. Dana Getchell to George White, Mar. 1, 1921, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 126. For the text of the revised charter, ibid., no. 83. For the Anatolia bylaws amended at the same time, ibid., no. 84. White had written earlier to Getchell, “My feeling is that our college officers in America do not really help us very much. They cannot. They are obliged to keep any one of their many interests and institutions from getting ahead of the others.” Apr. 12, 1920, ibid., no. 53. The influential James Barton favored mission colleges having independent boards. M. H. 123 (1927), 96–97. International College in Izmir also overcame constraints under the Prudential Committee by acquiring a separate board of trustees. Stone, Academies, 252. 35.  White to “Each Trustee,” op. cit.; to Barton, Apr. 29, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 314. 36.  Ross, et al., eds. American Philanthropy, 126; Charles T. Riggs, “The Work of the American Board Among the Greeks,” op. cit., 34; Henry Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” III, 46; IV, 21–22. 37.  Charles Riggs, “Merzifon Station,” II, 6–9; Stone, Academies, 271–72, 282; M. H. 123 (1927), 298; Roger R. Trask, ‘“Unnamed Christianity’ in Turkey During the Atatürk Era,” part II, The Muslim World, vol. 55, no. 2 (Apr. 1965), 101–11. 38. Henry Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” IV, 23–25; M. H. 134 (1938), 448. For American institutions in Turkey during the 1920s and after, Stone, Academies, 263–91; Daniel, Philanthropy, 171–248. 39.  Vasilis Dimitriades, [Topography of Thessaloniki During Turkish Rule, 1430– 1912] (Thessaloniki, 1983), 220; Alexandra Parafentidou, [“PYLEA (Kapoutzides)”], [Macedonian Life] (October 1967), 31–33; Fanoula Tsouka-Fountoukidou, [Pylea with the Passage of Centuries—History] (Thessaloniki, 1997), 96, 130–37. 40. White, Adventuring, 119, 126–27; Iatrides, “Anatolia College’s Move to Greece,” 154–55; MBTAC, Nov. 2, 1926. 41.  George White, “Regarding the Location of Anatolia College,” Mar. 5, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 118; Lovejoy, Certain Samaritans, 36–37. 42.  White to Barton, Apr. 26, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 312. White informed the trustees in 1925 that the prime minister had given his written promise “to give us as a free grant the site we desire outside Salonica and above the malaria.” “To Each Trustee,” op. cit. 43.  White to Ernest Riggs, Jan. 7, 1924, ABC 16.5., v. 7, no. 298; MBTAC, Nov. 2, 1926; ibid., Mar. 9, 1927; White, Adventuring, 126–27. Presidential Decree of Nov. 6, 1926, granted Anatolia permission to acquire property. For clashes between refugees and local residents, Kontogiorgi, Population Exchange, 182.



Notes to Pages 204–212

447

CHAPTER 6 REBUILDING ANATOLIA IN GREECE: THE INTERWAR YEARS (1924–1940)  1. Vacalopoulos, History, 110–12; I. K. Hassiotis, “First After the First and Queen of the Worthy,” in I. K. Hassiotis, ed., Thessaloniki, Queen of the Worthy, History and Culture (Thessaloniki, 1997), v. 1, 13–14, 28, 39–44, 55; Evangelos A. Hekimoglou, “Thessaloniki, 1912–1940: Economic Developments,” in ibid., 208–9.   2.  White to Barton, Apr. 29, 1924, ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 314.   3.  White to Barton, ibid., March 31, 1924, no. 305; June 13, 1924, no. 318; July 28, 1924, no. 329. Getchell quote from Lovejoy, Samaritans, 297.   4.  Ibid., 190–93; Mears, Greece Today, vi, 244, 279; Barton, Story, 163; A.C. Catalogues, 1924, 1925, A.C. archives.   5.  I. K. Hassiotis, ed., The Armenian Community of Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki, 2005), 17–25, 117–19; Ross, et al., eds., American Philanthropy, 18, 138; Barton, Story, 170, 274–76.  6. “White, Adventuring, 121; A.C. Director’s Book; A.C. Catalogues, 1924–1929. The three graduates cited were Arthur Asjian, Haigaram Baronian, and Charalambos Stephanides. Baronian, Barefoot, 87–97. For a harrowing account of Stephanides’s early years in Turkey, Allen, Macedonia, 20–26.   7.  ABC 16.5, v. 7, no. 330.   8.  A.C. Catalogues, 1924–1940; interview with George Yemenetzis, Nov. 27, 2001.  9. Ross, et al. American Philanthropy, 118–19, 139–41; Hekimoglou, [Thessaloniki], 388; idem., “Thessaloniki, 1912–1940,” 203. 10.  George E. White, “Anatolia College, Salonica,” The Athens Times, Mar. 8, 1930. 11.  White to Barton, June 13, 1924, no. 318, and July 23, 1924, no. 327, ABC 16.5, v. 7; White, Adventuring, 119. 12. Compton, Morning Cometh (2008), 87, 112–14; White, Adventuring, 121–22, 127, 140. 13. White, Adventuring, 115–31; William R. Compton, ed., “Memoir of Ruth McGavren Compton, Greece 1925–1939,” 3–4 in “Events from the Lives of Carl and Ruth Compton as Recorded in Their Own Words” (unpublished manuscript, 2008); A.C. Catalogues, 1924–1933; letter from Minas Vavakos ’40, Dec. 10, 2010, A.C. archives. 14. Compton, Morning Cometh (2008), 115–116; interview with George Yemenetzis ’32, Jan. 7, 2002. 15. A.C. Catalogues, 1925–1933; MBTAC, Apr. 26, 1928; White, Adventuring, 169–72; Compton, Morning Cometh (2008), 119. 16. Law 4862, Jan. 7, 1931, provided for the recognition of foreign schools. Ministry of Education Document no. 29872, Mar. 5, 1931, extended recognition to Anatolia. For the Greek state’s educational reconfiguration of 1929, Alexis Dimaras, [The Reform That Didn’t Happen] (Athens, 1973), v. 2, XLV11, 169–70. White, Adventuring, 114, 121, 130, 133. 17. White, Adventuring, 134; A.C. Bulletin, 1929–1930, 9, 30–34; 193; Anatolia College Golden Jubilee, 1886–1936, A.C. archives. The proposal to open a medical division at Anatolia originated with Dr. Jesse Marden, who had directed the hospital at Merzifon, and Dr. Ruth Parmalee, director of the American Women’s

448

Notes to Pages 213–222

Hospital Board in Greece. MBTAC, Nov. 2, 1926, and May 4, 1927. White abandoned aspirations to develop an agricultural department, presumably because of the American Farm School in Thessaloniki since 1904. Though some consideration was given on both sides to the merging of those two institutions, no concrete steps were taken. James L. Barton to Esther H. Sutton, Dec. 14, 1925; Charles L. House to John Henry House, Vienna, Austria, Jan. 2, 1928, A.C. archives. 18. Alexis Dimaras, “The Movement for Reform: A Historical Perspective,” Comparative Educational Review, v. 22, no. 1 (Feb. 1978), 12–17. For the state curriculum in 1931, Dimaras, [Reform], 175. For an example of severe measures taken against a Thessaloniki private school for veering from the Ministry’s guidelines, ibid., 157–58. For the parallel experience of an American-affiliated school founded in Athens at this time, Homer W. Davis, The Story of Athens College, the First Thirtyfive Years (1925–1960) (Athens, 1992), 105–23. 19.  A.C. Catalogue, 1939–1940; Dikran l. Eprem ’38 described the “Free Studies” or “General Course” in a letter to McGrew, Mar. 23, 1995, A.C. archives. 20.  A.C. Catalogues, 1924–40; H. Riggs, “Turkey, 1910–1942,” IV, 39. 21.  Bishop Alexopoulos served as trustee until recalled to Greece in 1931. MBTAC, Apr. 24, 1929; Apr. 9, 1931; White, Adventuring, 136, 146. 22.  A.C. Catalogues, 1924–1940; Tracy C. Miller, “Anatolia College: Light in a Distant Land,” The Grinnell Magazine (June–Aug. 1982), 23–25. 23.  A.C. Catalogues, 1924–1940; Stephens, Survival, 54. 24. White, Adventuring, 145–46; A.C. Catalogue, 1929–30, 12. 25.  The Anatolian, 1930, 63. 26.  Interview with Dimitris Zannas, Jan. 31, 2002. An insightful commentary about Carl and Ruth Compton is provided by their son, William R. Compton, in Compton, Morning Cometh (2008), 38–44. 27.  A.C. Bulletin, 1933–34, 18–19; Anatolia (student periodical), v. 3, no. 4 (June, 1935), 6; vol. 15, no. 1 (Feb., 1938), 4–5. 28.  The Anatolian, 1928, 1929, 1932; Anatolia (student periodical), 1933, 1934, A.C. archives; A.C. Catalogues, 1927–1929. 29. White, Adventuring, 113, 116, 120, 128, 148; M. H. 133 (1937), 370; 134 (1938), 425–26. 30.  M. H. 111 (1915), 411; White, Adventuring, 138. 31.  A.C. Bulletins, 1927–37; Sahagian, Helen, “Mary Louise Graffam, Ernest C. Partridge, and the Armenians of Sivas,” Hovannisian, Armenian Sebastia, 386; William R. Compton, ed., “Memoir of Ruth McGavren Compton, Turkey 1920–1924, 45–46 in “Events”; Stephens, Survival, 54. 32. White, Adventuring, 123; Charles T. Riggs, “History of the Merzifon Station,” II, 5. 33.  A.C. Bulletins, 1924–1940; White, Adventuring, 116, 142; Stephens, Survival, 63; interview with Byron Antoniades, Nov. 22, 2010. 34.  James Abel to Everett Stephens, Nov. 9, 1984, A.C. archives. 35.  Trask, “’Unnamed Christianity,’” 107. Mead subsequently became a professor of philosophy at the California Institute of Technology. The two teachers who died during their Anatolia service were H. L. Hopkins (1927) and Marion C. Hine



Notes to Pages 221–229

449

(1930), the latter during a summer trip to Germany. MBTAC, May 4 and Nov. 27, 1927, Anatolian, 1931; A.C. archives. 36.  Interview with Dr. May in Tiburon, California, May 1990; Robert Abzug, “Rollo May, Philosopher as Therapist,” AHP Perspective Magazine (April–May 2003), 1–4. 37.  The Anatolian, 1930, 53–54. Aurora began publication in 1930. A.C. archives. Interview with Dimitris Zannas ’38, op. cit. 38.  For Thessaloniki schools before the Balkan Wars, Dimitriades, [Topography], 389–404; Hekimoglou, [Thessaloniki] 298–301; Bea Lewkowicz, The Jewish Community of Salonica: History, Memory, Identity (London and Portland, OR, 2006), 90, 97–98, 214–15. Quotation from Hassiotis, “First After the First,” 46. 39.  Greek authorities first issued a permit for the school to ABCFM’s Rev. William C. Cooper, Nov. 20, 1914, A.C. archives; White, Adventuring, 113, 121, 134. 40.  Ibid., 134, 139. MBTAC, April 26, 1928, A.C. archives. 41. White, Adventuring, 140; MBTAC, Apr. 24, 1930; Kaiser, ed., Morley, xii; Alice S. Riggs, A History of Anatolia College 1933–1950 (Thessaloniki, 2007), 164–65. 42.  Ministry of Education order no. 35465, June 17, 1931; Bulletin of the American Boarding School for Girls, 1931, 1937, A.C. archives; Compton, Morning Cometh (2008), 119–20. Quotation from Law 4373 of 1929, Dimaras, [Reform], 170. For an analysis of the student makeup of both Anatolia divisions, Panayiotis Antoniou, [“The American College ‘Anatolia’ (1924–1940): From Merzifon to Thessaloniki”], graduate degree thesis, University of Thessaloniki (1997). 43.  MBTAC, Dec. 2, 1931, May 4 and Nov. 9, 1932, Jan. 31 and Apr. 27, 1933, Nov. 20, 1936, May 24, 1937; Russell H. Stafford to Carl Compton, Feb. 3, 1933; Compton to Stafford, Feb. 28, 1933, A.C. archives. 44. White, Adventuring, 140–41, 149–51; Bulletin of the American Boarding School for Girls, May 1931, 4, A.C. archives; MBTAC, April 27, 1933, April 26, 1934, May 16, 1935, Nov. 20, 1936. 45.  MBTAC, Dec. 12, 1938; Ministry of Education orders 100179, Nov. 20, 1939, and 82352/2, Aug. 6, 1940; petition by President Ernest Riggs to Ministry of Education, July 27, 1940, A.C. archives. 46.  Roula Varella-Papadimitriou ’30 describes student life in Anatolia Alumnus, no. 84 (Mar. 2002), 123–24; Despoina G. Lazaridou, [Recollections and Events of a Lifetime] (Thessaloniki, 1995), 30–32; The Anatolian, 1930, 28–29. 47.  MBTAC Mar. 9, 1926, May 4, 1927, Dec. 5, 1929; White to Barton, July 3 and 28, 1924, ABCFM, 506, nos. 323, 328. 48.  MBTAC, Mar. 9, 1927, Nov. 14 and Dec. 22, 1928, Dec. 5, 1929, Apr. 24, 1930; White, Adventuring, 124, 132–33, 137–40. Shallcross was employed until July 1932. MBTAC, May 4, 1932. 49. White, Adventuring, 139, 143–44, 192–95; MBTAC, Nov. 17, 1927; Apr. 9 and Dec. 2, 1931; Apr. 27, 1933; Apr. 26, 1934. At the initiative of Ernest Riggs, Anatolia made overtures to International College for some form of affiliation, which, however, was not forthcoming, as the institution relocated to Beirut. Ibid., May 16 and Oct. 31, 1935; May 11, 1938; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 63–65. 50.  William Compton, ed., “Memoir of Ruth Compton, Greece,” 11, in “Events”; White, Adventuring, 128–129; White to Barton, Mar. 14 and May 6, 1924, ABC v. 7, nos. 203, 315; Charles T. Riggs, “History of Merzifon Station,” part 2, 6–7. A

450

Notes to Pages 229–235

proposal approved by the Board in 1926 to sell the Merzifon property for $250,000 apparently produced no result, MBTAC, Mar. 9, 1926; Nov. 14, 1928; Nov. 18, 1930; May 4, 1932; May 24 and Dec. 13, 1937; Mar. 9, May 11 and Dec. 12, 1938; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 107; George White to Ernest Riggs, Feb. 3, 1932, A.C. archives. The College later was able to sell some further items of equipment from Merzifon. MBTAC, May 10, 1939. For the issue of Turkish indemnification, Goodsell, Witnesses, 228–30. 51. White, Adventuring, 130, 138–41; William Compton, ed., “Memoir of Ruth Compton, Greece,” 19–20, 33, in “Events”; M. H. 123 (1927), 235; 124 (1928), 37; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 42–43, 59. 52.  MBTAC, Mar. 9, 1927, Apr. 24, Nov. 18, 1930; Feb. 4, 1931; White, Adventuring, 144–45. 53.  MBTAC, Nov. 18, 1930, Feb. 4 and Apr. 9, 1931; White, Adventuring, 144–47, 151; Ruth Compton, “Greece, 1925–1939”, 20–22. 54.  A.C. Catalogue, 1933–1934, 10; MBTAC, Apr. 9, 1931, Apr. 27, 1933; “Total Gateway Budget,” ibid., Feb. 28, 1934. 55. White, Adventuring, 58, 138, 196; “William Compton, ed., “Memoir of Ruth Compton, Greece,” 20–22, in “Events”; idem, “Recreation and Reclamation in Macedonia,” The AHEPA Magazine (June, 1931), 6–7; MBTAC, Nov. 22, 1933; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 60; Ernest Riggs, “St. George’s Church” (Apr. 26, 1936), in “To President Emeritus George E. White, D.D., On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Anatolia College,” XLIII, A.C. archives; James L. Barton to George Fisteris, Mar. 23, 1936, ibid., LIV. 56.  MBTAC, Apr. 27 and Nov. 22, 1933. 57.  M. H. 117 (1921), 231; 128 (1932), 377; MBTAC, Mar., 1927; Grabill, Diplomacy, 259–60. Henry H. Riggs described the 1915 massacres and turmoil in southeastern Turkey in Days of Tragedy in Armenia: Personal Experiences in Harpoot, 1915–1917 (Ann Arbor, MI), 1997. 58.  Ernest W. Riggs, “The American Board and the Turks,” The Moslem World, v. 14 (Jan. 1924), no. 1, 1–4; idem, “His Relations to the Language,” M. H. 118, 1922, 310–11; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 66–67; Henry H. Riggs, Days of Tragedy, 21–24, 169. 59.  MBTAC, Apr. 9, 1931; May 4, Nov. 9, 1932; Jan. 31, 1933; Russell Stafford to Carl Compton, Dec. 20, 1932 and Feb. 3, 1933; Mabel E. Emerson, Clerk of ABCFM, to Trustees of Anatolia College, Feb. 7, 1933, A.C. archives; M. H. 128, 1932, 37. Several years earlier George White had recommended Carl Compton as his replacement. White to Barton, July 21, 1924, ABC v. 506, no. 326. 60.  MBTAC, Jan. 31, Apr. 27, 1933. One consideration possibly influencing the trustees, though no direct evidence has been found to that effect, may have been the circumstance that Ernest Riggs, like George White, as a career missionary had his salary and related costs funded by the ABCFM while serving at Anatolia. The College’s own budget would have had to bear the cost of an appointee without such connections during the Depression years. MBTAC, Nov. 22, 1933. For a somewhat different version of the Riggs succession, Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 55–56, 64. 61.  MBTAC, Apr. 27, 1933; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 50–51, 70; John Iatrides, ed., Ambassador MacVeagh Reports: Greece, 1933–1947 (Princeton, 1980), 52.



Notes to Pages 236–244

451

62.  A.C. Catalogues, 1927–1936; MBTAC, Feb. 4, 1931; Anatolia (student periodical) v. 3, no. 2 (Dec. 1934), 6–7; White, Adventuring, 153–54; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 68–69, 217. 63. White, Adventuring, 129, 151–54; William Compton, ed., “Memoir of Ruth Compton, Greece,” 12, in “Events”; MBTAC, June 11, 1936; A.C. Catalogues, 1934–1939; Anatolia College Golden Jubilee, 1886–1936, A.C. archives; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 49, 70, 91, 94; interview with Patroclos Tzizinikas ’37, Dec. 1, 2010; letter from Minas Vavakas, ’40, op. cit. 64.  MBTAC, Dec. 20, 1935; May 8, 1936; May 5 and 24, 1937; Dec. 12, 1938; Emerson to William E. Hawkes, Jan. 14, 1936; quotes from Emerson to A.C. Board of Managers, May 29, 1936, A.C. archives; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 56, 76. 65.  Compton to Russell H. Stafford, Feb. 28, 1933, A.C. archives; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 55–56. 66.  MBTAC, May 24, 1937; Dec. 12, 1938; MECBT, Dec. 30, 1937; Oct. 7, 1938, A.C. archives; Stephens, Survival, 68. 67.  MECBT, Mar. 22, 1939; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 73. 68.  Elizabeth Kontogiorgi, “Economic Consequences following Refugee Settlement in Greek Macedonia, 1923–1932,” in Renee Hirshon, ed., Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey (New York, 2003), 62–77; Aleka Karadimou-Yerolymbou, “Archeology and Urban Planning Development in Thessaloniki (19th–20th c.),” in Hassiotis, ed., Queen of the Worthy, 95–99; George E. White, “Recreation and Reclamation in Macedonia,” The AHEPA Magazine (June 1931), 6–7. 69.  Anatolia College Golden Jubilee 1886–1936, A.C. archives; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 71–72. 70. [Directory of the American College “Anatolia”], Thessaloniki, 1936, 50–63. Seven male students who graduated from the “General Studies” section in 1938 and 1939 received diplomas certified only by Anatolia. A.C. Catalogues, 1937– 1938, 1938–1939. 71.  The Anatolian, 1930, 76–80; 1932, 28; Lazaridou, [Recollections], 56–58; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 45, 66, 80, 86, 106; MBTAC, Dec. 2, 1940. 72. White, Adventuring, 155–172; [“ANATOLIA,” 1886–1986]. 73. Christopher M. Woodhouse, The Story of Modern Greece (London, 1968), 212–37; Richard Clogg, A Short History of Modern Greece (Cambridge, UK), 1979, 105–35. 74.  Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 88–89, 93, 99, 101; Stephens, Survival, 68–69; William Compton, ed., “Memoir of Ruth Compton, Greece,” 30, in “Events”; interviews with Byron Antoniades and Patroclos Tzitzinikas, op. cit.; letter from Minas Vavakos ’40, op. cit. Anatolia’s experience apparently differed from that of Athens College, whose location in the capital and special legal status seem to have made it more susceptible to interference. Davis, Athens College, 233–49. 75.  “In Memoriam,” 1986, University of California Digital Library; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 105. 76.  Interview with Byron Antoniades, op. cit.; [“ANATOLIA,” 1886–1986]. 77.  A.C. Bulletin, 1938–1939, 8–10. Ministry of Education order no. 74678, Nov. 21, 1938, renewed Anatolia’s permit to operate a six–year gymnasium as well as

452

Notes to Pages 245–252

the first two years of the new eight-year secondary program, A.C. archives. However, subsequent legislation (Law 1849 of 1939) allowed only state institutions to offer instruction the last two years. If implemented, private schools presumably would have lost the right to award full secondary diplomas required for university entrance. The outbreak of war prevented that provision from taking effect. Dimaras, [Reform], 192–93. Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 78–79, 83–84, 101. 78.  Application to Ministry of Education to relocate the Girls Gymnasium, July 27, 1940; Ministry of Education permit, Oct. 2, 1940; recommendation by the General Inspector of Foreign and Minority Schools, Oct. 10, 1940, A.C. archives; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 77, 83–84, 103, 107, 110, 116; MBTAC, Dec. 12, 1937; June 6, 1939; May 15 and Dec. 2, 1940. 79. Stephens, Survival, 70–71.

CHAPTER 7 ANATOLIA’S THIRD WARTIME INTERRUPTION (1940–1945)  1. John Koliopoulos, Greece and the British Connection 1935–1941 (Oxford, 1977), 263–64.  2. Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 111–13; Ernest E. Riggs, “Meeting the Test in Thessaloniki,” in Homer W. Davis, ed., Greece Fights: The People behind the Front (New York, 1942), 41–43. Harley Sensemann, Anatolia English teacher who elected to remain after most of the foreign staff departed, kept a detailed account of events until his and Mrs. Sensemann’s own departure in November together with Mary Ingle. Stephens, Survival, 73–75.  3. Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 113–16, 123.  4. Ibid., 116–28, 134; Ernest Riggs, “Meeting the Test,” 44; Homer Davis, “Greek War Relief and the Greek Spirit,” in Davis, ed., Greece Fights, 29–32; Alexandros K. Kyrou, “The Greek–American Community and the Famine in Axisoccupied Greece,” in Richard Clogg, ed., Bearing Gifts to Greeks: Humanitarian Aid to Greece in the 1940s (Hampshire, UK, 2008), 58–84.  5. Koliopoulos, Connection, 179–264; “Salonika Port Demolished,” New York Times, Apr. 11, 1941.  6. Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 128–31, 139; White, Adventuring, 142–43; affidavit signed by John D. Johnson, U.S. Consul General, Thessaloniki, May 13, 1941, A.C. archives.   7.  Notes on an agreement between the U.S. and German Consulates of Thessaloniki, May 26, 1941, from the papers of Orestes Iatrides, A.C. archives. For the Farm School’s experience at this time, Marder, Stewards, 198–200.   8.  Orestes Iatrides to trustees, Thessaloniki, Jan. 16, 1945; recorded interview with Manos Iatrides, Feb. 7, 2002, A.C. archives; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 139–40, 172.  9. For a description of Panorama (Arsakli) village at this time, Nikos and Afroditi Telidis, [Panorama, Life and Memories There] (Thessaloniki, 2005), 119. 10. Koliopoulos, Connection, 284–93; Vasos P. Mathiopoulos, [Illustrations of the Occupation], 4th ed. (Athens, 2006), 41–49.



Notes to Pages 252–257

453

11.  The Waldheim Report, International Commission of Historians (Copenhagen, 1993); Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, the Experience of Occupation, 1941–44 (New Haven and London, 1993), 161; Thanasis S. Fotiou, [Terrorism in Greece: the Bloody Path of Fritz Shubert and the Greek “Team of Hunters” in Occupied Crete and Macedonia] (Thessaloniki, 2011), 347–51. 12. Mazower, Hitler’s Greece, 19–22. 13. Stephens, Survival, 79. William R. Compton, “Reminiscences of Anatolia in the Early 1950s” (unpublished manuscript, Jan. 2002), 1. The network of underground tunnels was closed following the German departure, but a significant portion remains accessible. 14.  Stavros B. Thomadakis, “Black Markets, Inflation and Force,” in John O. Iatrides, ed. Greece in the 1940s, A Nation in Crisis (Hanover and London, 1981), 64–78; Mazower, Hitler’s Greece, 24–49. 15.  Basil Kontis and Giannis D. Stefanides, “Thessaloniki: The Critical 1940’s,” Hassiotis, Queen of the Worthy, 216; Violetta Hionidou, “Famine in Occupied Greece: Causes and Consequences,” in Richard Clogg, ed., Gifts to Greeks, 27–29. 16.  MBTAC, Apr. 28, 1942; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 134, 141, 144–46. 17.  Orestes Iatrides to trustees, Jan. 16 and Mar. 19, 1945; [Minutes of the Meetings of the Executive Committee of the Association “Greek Schools Koraïs ”], A.C. archives; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 149. 18. Mazower, Salonica, 421–52; idem., Hitler’s Greece, 235–61; Albertos Nar, “Social Organization and Activity of the Jewish Community in Thessaloniki,” Hassiotis, Queen of the Worthy, 288–92. 19.  The moving experience of a 1934 alumna, Lily Alkalai-Molho, who managed to escape but lost most of her family, including her sister, a former Anatolia student, is recounted by Bea Lewkowicz, The Jewish Community of Salonica, 175–77, 191. The trials of another survivor, an alumna of 1940, are related by Mary Ingle in Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 195. Cf. Stephens, Survival, 83–90. 20. Anna Theocharides Holdeman, My Memoirs (Denver, CO, 2014), 46–49; interview with Dimitris Zannas, Thessaloniki, Jan. 19, 2011. The names of Zannas and Paraskevaides appear on the list of “Virtuous Gentiles” at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. 21.  Anatolia (student periodical), June 1934, A.C. archives; Steven Bowman, Jewish Resistance in Wartime Greece (London and Portland, OR, 2006), 91–93; Costa G. Couvaras, O.S.S. With the Central Committee of E.A.M. (San Francisco, 1982); idem., Photo Album of the Greek Resistance (San Francisco, 1978); Susan Heuck Allen, Classical Spies: American Archeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece (Ann Arbor, MI, 2011), 196–202, 390; Nikos Xanthopoulos, [“Who Was to Blame?” Civil War 1941–1944] (Thessaloniki, 2013), 225–28. 22. Mazower, Hitler’s Greece, 297–339; Waldheim Report, 185. 23.  Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 148; MBTAC, Jan. 20, 1942, Apr. 18, 1944. 24. Compton, Morning Cometh (2008), 120–25; William R. Compton, ed., “Letters from Washington, DC, 1943–1944,” 3–10, in “Events”; Kyrou, “Community,” 71–74.

454

Notes to Pages 257–266

25. Compton, Morning Cometh (2008), 125–35; ibid., 211–39; Compton to Ernest Riggs, Dec. 17, 1944, ibid., 213; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 154–55. 26. Orestes Iatrides to trustees, Jan. 16 and Mar. 19, 1945; MBTAC, May 29, 1945, A.C. archives; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 162–64. 27.  Carl Compton to Ernest Riggs, Dec. 17, 1944, in Compton, Morning Cometh (2008), 213; quote from Ernest Riggs to Mabel Emerson, Apr. 20, 1945, A.C. archives; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 155, 159–60, 171. 28.  Ibid., 150–51, 160, 172–73; Iatrides to trustees, Jan. 16, 1945, op. cit.; Marder, Stewards, 212; Ernest Riggs to U.S. Consul General, Thessaloniki, Nov. 26, 1947, A.C. archives; Carl to Ruth Compton, Apr. 8, 1945, Morning Cometh (2008), 226. 29.  Carl to Ruth Compton, July 8, 1945, ibid., 236; ibid., 138; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 168, 172–83; MBTAC, Apr. 18, 1944.

CHAPTER 8 ANATOLIA RENEWED: FROM CIVIL WAR TO A BRIGHTER ERA (1945–1958)   1.  Ernest Riggs to Mabel Emerson, May 3, 1945, op. cit.; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 164, 190, 196.   2.  Ibid., 209; Dimaras, [Reform], 50–51. Ernest Riggs expressed the many pressures and frustrations of Anatolia’s first postwar year, “Confidential Report to the President of the Board of Trustees, Anatolia College,” early 1946, A.C. archives.   3.  C. Compton, “Anatolia College, School Year of 1947–1948,” A.C. archives. The reintroduction of the preparatory year resulted in a hiatus of one year for seniors, with no class graduating in 1951.   4.  “Conduct Grades”; [“Boys Boarding Regulations”], A.C. archives.  5. Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 209; The Anatolian, 1948, 48.  6. Confirmation of equivalent status by Inspector of Foreign and Minority Schools of Thessaloniki, Jan. 8, 1946, A.C. archives.  7. [“ANATOLIA,” 1886–1986]; biographic sketch of George Gotzamanis, A.C. archives; personal communication from Dr. Nicholas Gonatas, June 22, 2006.   8.  MBTAC, May 29, 1945; Stephens, Survival, 121–24.   9.  Iatrides to trustees, Jan. 16, 1945, op. cit.; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 209. 10.  MECBT, Aug. 7, 1946; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 193. 11.  Compton to Mrs. Edward Holsten, treasurer, American Friends of Greece, July 23, 1956; July 30, 1957, A.C. archives. 12.  The Anatolian, 1948, 2; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 225–26. 13.  The Anatolian, 1948, 28, 45; C. Compton, President’s Annual Report, 1950– 1951, A.C. archives; idem., Morning Cometh, 141. 14. Despina G. Lazaridou, [Recollections], 42–43; The Anatolian, 1952; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 202, 222, 236, 242, 259–60, 263–64, 289–90. The Ministry of Education issued Anatolia a permit for an English-language frontistirion (tutorial school) in 1946, subject to annual renewal.



Notes to Pages 267–275

455

15.  Ibid., 211; Orestes Iatrides to Anatolia trustees, Jan. 16, 1945, op. cit.; circular letter from the Executive Committee of Anatolia’s Board of Trustees to “Dear Anatolia Associates,” May, 1945; Ernest Riggs, President’s Annual Report, 1948–1949, A.C. archives. 16.  The Greek civil war remains a complex and controversial subject. Sources for this brief background include Iatrides, ed., Greece in the 1940s, op. cit ; Mark Mazower, ed., After the War Was Over (Princeton, 2000); Lars Baerentzen, John O. Iatrides, Ole L. Smith, eds., Studies in the History of the Greek Civil War 1945–1949 (Copenhagen, 1987). 17. Compton, Morning Cometh (2008), 140–41; William R. Compton, “Supplement to Ruth Compton’s Memoir” (unpublished manuscript, April 2003), 2; Marder, Stewards, 236–40; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 223, 246–50. 18.  C. Compton, “Report for the School Year of 1956–57,” A.C. archives; Lois Riess Kerimis, “The World’s First Hijacking,” Odyssey (Sept.–Oct. 2005), 70–71. 19.  C. Compton, “Anatolia College, School Year of 1947–1948,” A.C. archives. 20. Compton, Morning Cometh (2008), 144–45; William Compton, ed., “Supplement,” 2–3; Edmund Keeley, The Salonika Bay Murder. Cold War Politics and the Polk Murder (Princeton, 1989). 21.  MBTAC, Oct. 29, 1947. 22.  Eleftheriades to Carl Compton, Sept. 7, 1948, Aug. 7 and Sept. 29, 1950, A.C. archives. 23.  Interview with Antonis Papadopoulos, Feb. 22, 2011. 24. Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 190. The trustees assigned Massachusetts architect Roy Creighton to prepare a preliminary plan for a Girls School campus. MBTAC, Apr. 18, 1944; A.C. archives. 25.  MBTAC, Apr. 18, 1944; May 25, 1945; Apr. 11, 1949; May 19, 1950; MECBT, May 22, 1946; Carl Compton to Mrs. Edward Holsten, Treasurer, American Friends of Greece, Nov. 8, 1956; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 208. 26.  Ernest Riggs, Annual Report of the President 1946–1947. Budget and endowment figures are recorded annually in MBTAC. 27.  MBTAC, May 13, Sept. 17, Oct. 25, 1946; May 16, Oct. 6, 1947; Jan. 16, Mar. 25, Apr. 26, May, 22, 1948; Apr. 11, 1949; May 19, 1950; Apr. 27, 1951; Jan. 31, 1952; MECBT, Aug. 7, 1946; Sept. 9, 1947; Annual Report of the President 1946–1947, 1947–1948, 1949–1950; Alice S. Riggs, “A History of Anatolia College, 1933–1950,” unpublished version, A.C. archives, II, 163–181, 202–3, 213–14, 225–27. 28.  MBTAC, Oct. 27, 1949; Mar. 28, May 19, 1950; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 285–86; Ernest Riggs to Carl Compton, Jan. 23, 1950, A.C. archives. For the experience of another school in Greece with NECA, Davis, Athens College, 325–48. 29.  MBTAC, Feb. 8, 1951; Nov. 14, 1952. 30.  James Abel to Everett Stephens, Nov. 9, 1984, A.C. archives. 31.  MBTAC, Oct. 27, 1949; Carl to Ruth Compton, May 18, 1949, William R. Compton, ed., “Letters from Carl to Ruth, Spring 1949,” in “Events,” 11; Compton to Ernest Riggs, Nov. 11 and Dec. 11, 1950, A.C. archives. Legal Order no. 420, Oct. 21, 1947, granted customs exemptions to Anatolia and certain other schools.

456

Notes to Pages 276–282

32.  Carl Compton, “Anatolia College, A Challenging Opportunity at a Critical Time in a Strategic Place,” Mar. 23, 1950, A.C. archives. 33.  Ernest W. Riggs, “Special Report to the Board of Trustees on Immediate Building Needs,” Mar. 15, 1950, A.C. archives; The Anatolian, 1948, 49. 34.  MECBT, July 5, 1945, May 27, 1947; MBTAC, Oct. 25, 1946; Apr. 26, 1948; Oct. 27, 1949; May 10, 1957; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 207, 213, 231, 268; S. Ch. Iakovides, “Sums paid by Anatolia College for the purchase of lots known as Gerousis Property,” May 13, 1961, A.C. archives. An act by the Greek Parliament in 1947 granted Anatolia exemption from the legal maximum of 100 stremmas (about 25 acres) permitted at that time for ownership by foreign entities in Greek Macedonia, considered to be a vulnerable border zone. 35.  MECBT, Sept. 9, 1947; Sept. 15, 1952; Ernest Riggs, “Special Report,” op. cit.; MBTAC, Apr. 11, Oct. 27, 1949; Mar. 28, 1950; Apr. 27, 1951; Jan. 31, 1952; Nov. 14, 1952; Apr. 17, 1953; The Anatolian, 1952; interview with Fofo Karalia, Mar. 4, 2011. 36.  President’s Reports, 1951–52, 1952–53, 1953–54, 1957–58, 1958–59; MBTAC, Apr. 17, 1953; Apr. 23, Oct. 15, 1954; May 10, 1957; May 15, 1959; Lazaridou [Recollections], 46; Compton to Ernest and Alice Riggs, Oct. 18, 1950 and Oct. 2, 1951, A.C. archives. Quote from report by General Inspectorate, No. 2264, June 6, 1954, ibid. A water station bearing his name honors the contribution by Lazaros Amarantides to the campus development. 37.  MBTAC, Apr. 25 and Nov. 14, 1952; Apr. 23, 1954; Apr. 22, 1955; May 19, 1956; May 10, 1957; “Procedure Governing the Relationship between the Anatolia College Trustee Promotion Committee, the Promotion Secretary and the NECA Office” (June 15, 1955); Hiram Sibley to Carl Compton (June 16, 1955); Alexander McIntosh, President, Tamblyn and Brown, to Howard Johnston (Jan. 22, 1958), A.C. archives. 38. William Compton, ed., “Supplement,” 7; personal communications from Prodromos Ebeoglou and Panayiotis Tsitsiringos; Stephens, Survival, 111–12; Carl Compton to Ernest and Alice Riggs, Oct. 2, 1951, and to Ernest Riggs, Nov. 9, 1951; Ernest Riggs to Compton, Jan. 11, 1952, A.C. archives. 39. Compton, Morning Cometh (2008), 143; idem., Anatolia College, School Year of 1947–1948; President’s Report for School Year 1951–52, 1955–56, A.C. archives. 40.  Law 1286 of 1949; MBTAC, Apr. 23, 1954; “Report to the Advisory Board, School Year of 1956–57,” A.C. archives. 41.  MBTAC, May 23, 1958; President’s Reports, Jan. 15 and April 29, 1958. There remained an outstanding debt of $40,000 to the ABCFM for future negotiation with that body. 42.  Ernest Riggs, “Interview with Prof. Liatsos, July 12th, 1949,” A.C. archives. 43.  Compton to Ernest Riggs, Aug. 8, 1951; Lambros Pararas to Compton, July 31, 1953, A.C. archives. Data concerning Anatolia’s teaching staff is found in the College’s personnel files, ibid. 44.  Compton to Ernest and Alice Riggs, Oct. 2, 1951, A.C. archives; MBTAC, Oct. 15, 1954; Apr. 22, 1955; C. Compton, “Report to the Advisory Board, School Year of 1956–57,” op. cit.; Byron Vaklavas, ’56, [“Anatolia’s Stone Years,”], Anatolia Alumnus (1999), 37–47. Anatolia began, before World War II, to enroll Greek



Notes to Pages 283–290

457

faculty and staff in the Pension Fund for Lay Workers, established by the Congregational Church in New Jersey. 45.  Nick E. Gallopoulos, “Remembering Carl Compton’s Anatolia, 1947–1953,” unpublished address (Chicago, Mar. 19, 2009); Ioannis Panayiotides, [“Dimitrios Karademos, a Beloved Teacher and Colleague”], unpublished (Thessaloniki, Dec. 1991); “Personal Memorandum” from D. Karademos to President R. Hayden (Dec. 28, 1967), A.C. archives. 46.  Compton, “Report to the Advisory Board, School Year of 1956–57,” op. cit. 47.  Ernest Riggs, President’s Annual Report for the Year 1949–1950; The Anatolian, 1952; C. Compton, “Comments on the Fulbright Program,” May 25, 1953; “President’s Report to the Advisory Council for the School Year of 1955–56”; Compton to Ernest Riggs, Mar. 16, Nov. 9, and Dec. 10, 1951; Anna Holdeman, My Memoirs, op. cit., 59–77; College News (Jan. 1957), 11; (Nov.–Dec. 1957), 10. 48.  Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 268; William Compton, “Reminiscences,” 4; MBTAC, May 15 and Dec. 6, 1959; President’s Report for the School Year 1958–59. 49. Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 294–95; Karademos, “Personal Memorandum,” op. cit., 5; President’s Reports, 1953–54, 1954–55, 1957–58, A.C. archives. 50.  “President’s Report to the Advisory Council for the School Year of 1955– 56,” op. cit.; quote from Compton, “The Objectives of Anatolia College” (no date), A.C. archives. 51.  President’s Report for the School Year 1953–54, A.C. archives. 52.  John S. Koliopoulos, Plundered Loyalties: Axis Occupation and Civil Strife in Greek West Macedonia, 1941–1949 (London, 1999). 53.  “Report of the Work of Anatolia College and the Alumni Association in the Village of Lefkohori,” May 25, 1951; “A Proposal Submitted by the Alumni Association of Anatolia College to the National Commission in Greece of UNESCO,” June 10, 1951; “Lefkohori, A Village in Northern Greece Fights the Hard Battle of Survival and Rehabilitation,” May 27, 1953; Thomas F. Kennedy, Jr., “UNESCO Agricultural-Technical School Dedication,” 1953, A.C. archives. 54. Compton to John M. Saunders, UNESCO, Paris, France, Oct. 23, 1951; Minutes of UNESCO Project Committee for Village Educational Rehabilitation in Greece (Thessaloniki, Nov. 3, 1951); Kennedy report, undated, A.C. archives. 55. Anatolia College Mavrorachi Committee, “Anatolia College Students Adopt a Village,” June 30, 1951; ”Report of the Summer Activities of the Mavrorachi Committee of Anatolia College,” Oct. 1, 1951; [“The Chronicle of the Adoption of Mavrorachi Village”], 2002; quote from Compton to Soroptomist International Association, Apr. 26, 1952; Compton to Ernest and Alice Riggs, Oct. 18, 1950; to Ernest Riggs, Mar. 7, 1952; annual reports of the Mavrorachi Committee, A.C. archives. Compton had considered establishing a separate school to train welfare workers, but abandoned the plan when there were too few candidates. 56.  Mary Ingle to A.C. trustees, Dec. 5, 1960. 57.  The Anatolian, 1952; President’s Report for 1954–55. 58.  Amilkas Alivizatos, [“One Hundred and More Years of Negative Labor”], in Dimaras, [Reform], 213–15; Ernest Riggs, President’s Annual Report, 1948–1949, A.C. archives. Although law 4862 of 1931 regulating foreign schools required only subjects of Hellenic character to be taught in Greek (language, religion, history, geography), subsequent rulings extended that range.

458

Notes to Pages 290–300

59. Compton to Alexander Schnee, U. S. Embassy, Athens, Dec. 1, 1954; to Robert Dodds for the Board of Trustees (undated), A.C. archives; MBTAC, Apr. 22, 1955. 60.  Minutes of Advisory Council of Anatolia College, Mar. 3, 1955; Compton to Minister of Education and Religion, Mar. 30, 1955; “Internal Regulations,” Jan. 12, 1949, A.C. archives. Ernest Riggs had faced some of these same issues in 1949; Alice Riggs, Anatolia, 263. 61.  Compton to Lambros Pararas, July 29, 1948, and July 11, 1955; to Dr. William E. Weld, Jr., U.S. Cultural Attache, Oct. 27, Nov. 7, 1953, Feb. 15, 1954, A.C. archives. 62.  Lambros Pararas to Howard Johnston, Dec. 16, 1958, A.C. archives. In 1956 Anatolia revised its personnel classification and salary scale to conform to that of Greek schools. MBTAC, May 19, 1956. 63.  MBTAC, Apr. 25, 1952; “Proposal that Anatolia College Be Given a New Legal Status in Greek Education” (undated); Howard Johnston, “The President’s Fall Report,” Oct. 24, 1963; Administrative Council Minutes (henceforth, Ad. C. mins.), Jan. 17, 1966, A.C. archives. 64. Compton, Morning Cometh (2008), 145–47; Stephens, Survival, 114. 65.  Compton, “Report to the Advisory Board, School Year 1956–67,” op. cit. 66.  President’s Report for the School Year 1957–58, A.C. archives.

CHAPTER 9 THROUGH PROSPERITY AND DICTATORSHIP (1958–1974) 1.  Eugene T. Rossides, ed., The Truman Doctrine of Aid to Greece: A Fifty–Year Retrospective (New York and Washington, DC, 1998); David H. Close, Greece Since 1945, Politics, Economy and Society (Edinburgh, 2002), 31–59. 2.  Byron Vaklavas, [As If Yesterday . . . 40 Years Ago; Memories of 7 Years] (Thessaloniki, 1994), 11, 18–19; James C. Warren, Jr., “Origins of the ‘Greek Economic Miracle’: The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan Development and Stabilization Measures,” in Rossides, ed., Truman Doctrine, 103. 3.  Theano N. Tsiovaridou, “Thessaloniki’s Economic Development from 1950 to the Present,” Hassiotis, ed., Queen of the Worthy, 245–50; H. Johnston, “The President’s Fall Report,” Oct. 20, 1959, A.C. archives. 4.  Howard Johnston to Harry H. Liebster, Farco S.A., Sept. 18, 1963; A.C. press release, Apr. 1966, A.C. archives. 5.  MBTAC, May 19 and Oct. 20, 1956; May 10, 1957; H. Johnston, Promotion Report, May 15, 1958. 6.  MBTAC, Oct. 24, 1958. 7. Chapman to H. Johnston, Dec. 20, 1959, Mar. 5, 1961; President’s Report, 1959–60, and Fall Reports, Sept. 28, 1960, Oct. 17, 1961; H. Johnston to J. Chapman, Nov. 20, 1961; C. Compton to H. Johnston, Jan. 2, 1963, A.C. archives; [Anatolia College Catalogue], 1964–1965, 12, 21–23. 8.  Anatolia College Newsletter, no. 3, June 1961; Anatolia College 75th Anniversary, 1886–1961, May 1961.



Notes to Pages 301–308

459

  9.  MBTAC, Nov. 6, 1959; Mar. 16, 1961; S. Ch. Iakovides, “Sums Paid By Anatolia College for the Purchase of Lots Known as Gerousis Property,” op. cit.; C. Compton to H. Johnston, Feb. 25, Mar. 2, 1961; H. Johnston to J. Chapman, Feb. 2 and 24, Oct. 3, 1961; to Alice Riggs, Feb. 25, 1961; President’s Report for the School Year 1960–1961, 5–6; for 1961–1962, 8, Annex 4; Fall Report, Oct. 17, 1961, A.C. archives. Fridtjof Nansen, as High Commissioner of the League of Nations, had overseen the negotiations leading to the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey under the Lausanne Treaty of 1922. 10.  President’s Reports for the School Years 1960–1961,1961–1962; MBTAC, May 4, 1961, 8; H. Johnston to J. Chapman, June 21, 1961, A.C. archives. 11. President’s Report for the School Year 1961–1962, 4; MBTAC, Nov. 9, 1962, 3–4; [Anatolia College Catalogue], 1964–1965, 12; H. Johnston to J. Chapman, Feb. 7, 1964, A.C. archives. 12.  President’s Report for the Special Meeting of the Anatolia College Trustees, Oct. 24, 1958; President’s Report for the School Years 1958–59,1960–61; and Spring Report, 1964; H. Johnston, “Proposal for Enlarging and Improving the English Program at Anatolia College,” Apr. 27, 1959; Johnston to Chapman, Feb. 24, Mar. 5 and 30, 1961; J. B. Folsom, “The English Program at Anatolia College, 1961–62”; Anatolia College News, v. 1, no. 6, Jan. 21, 1963, 1, A.C. archives. 13.  Jeanne S. Johnston, “Anatolia College Library Report,” October 1961–April 1962 and Oct. 1963; President’s Report for the School Year 1961–1962; Ad. C. mins., Jan. 27, 1964. 14.  H. Johnston to J. Chapman, July 6, 1960, Apr. 23, 1964, A.C. archives; President’s Report for the School Year 1961–1962, op. cit. 15.  The President’s Fall Report, Oct. 20, 1959 and Oct. 23, 1962; College Life, no.1 (Dec. 1961), 9; no. 2 (Mar. 1962), 5. 16.  Anatolia College News, no. 2, Dec. 1959, 12. 17.  Despina G. Lazaridou, [Recollections], 52; H. Johnston to C. Compton, Dec. 17, 1962; Anatolia College News, v. 1, no. VI, Jan. 21, 1963, 1. 18.  MBTAC, Oct. 21, 1960, 3; May 5, 1961; President’s Reports for the School Years 1960–61, 1961–62; President’s Fall Report, 1961; Spring Report, 1964; Chapman to Johnston, Jan. 6 and June 14, 1961; May 19, 1962; Feb. 28, 1964; Johnston to Chapman, Jan. 30, Apr. 19, 1962; May 9 and 31, 1963; MECBT, Oct. 23; Nov. 25, 1963. 19. President’s Fall Report, Oct. 23, 1962; Spring Report, Apr. 10, 1964, A.C. archives. 20.  Floyd Black, “Report on a Visit to Anatolia College,” Nov. 20, 1961; Chapman to Anatolia Board, Jan. 15, 1960; Richard Quaintance to Chapman, Mar. 23, 1961, A.C. archives. 21.  Carl Compton to Harold Belcher, May 16, 1958; to Johnston, Dec. 7, 1959; Belcher to Johnston, May 19, 1962; Minutes of NECA Board of Directors, and “Definition of Organization, Functions and Finances,” June 4, 1963, A.C. archives; MECBT, Dec. 10, 1963. 22. Stephens to Chapman, Scarlatos and Johnston, Apr. 19, 1960; Johnston’s report on U.S. trip, Oct. 1–Dec. 16, 1960; Johnston to Chapman, Jan. 8, 1963; Chapman to Johnston, Feb. 17, 1963; MECBT, May 7, Oct. 31, 1962; Jan. 28, 1963; MBTAC, May 11, Nov. 9, 1962; Harold B. Belcher to trustees, Jan. 4, 1963.

460

Notes to Pages 308–315

23.  Black, “Report,” op. cit., 11; MECBT, May 7, 1962, Nov. 25, 1963; MBTAC, Nov. 11, 1962, 3; Nov. 25, 1963, p. 2; Chapman to Johnston, May 8, 1962, May 11, 1963; Johnston to Harold Belcher, Aug. 1, 1958 (draft not sent); Johnston to Chapman, Apr. 19 and 25, May 30, June 4, Nov. 8, 1962, Feb. 28, May 6 and 9, 1963; Belcher to Johnston, May 19, 1962; Johnston to Ebeoglou, Aug. 15, 1958; Johnston to Compton, Jan. 18 and July 15, 1962. 24.  Johnston to Chapman, Oct. 18, 1961, Jan. 30, 1962, Feb. 15, 1963; Johnston to H. Belcher, May 5, Nov. 9, 1962; MBTAC, May 17, 1963; Chapman to Johnston, May 19, 1962; Belcher to Johnston, c. Sept. 20, Nov. 23, 1962; MECBT, July 16, 1963. 25.  MECBT, Nov. 25, 1963; Johnston to N. Culolias, Dec. 9, 1963. By one account from a trustee present at the November meeting, Johnston was asked at that time to submit his resignation. E. Stephens to Ruth Goodnow, Apr. 22, 1964, A.C. archives. 26.  MECBT, Dec. 10 and 14, 1963; Johnston to Anatolia Faculty and Staff, Dec. 2, 1963; seven A.C. American teachers to Chapman, Dec. 3, 1963; O. Platiridou and A. Georgopapadakos to C. Compton, Dec. 15, 1963; Compton reply, Dec. 23; Johnston to Chapman, Dec. 3, 1963, Jan. 3, 1964; Johnston to Compton, Jan. 8 and Feb. 7, 1964, A.C. archives. 27.  Johnston to W. Sanford, Dec. 10, 1963; to Ariadne Sanford, Dec. 10, 1963; MBTAC, May 8, 1964. English teacher Thomas Walker replaced Sanford as dean for the remainder of the school year. 28.  Chapman to W. Sanford, Jan. 4, 1964; MECBT, Jan. 22 and Feb. 21, 1964. 29.  Johnston to Chapman, Jan. 8, 1964; MBTAC, May 8, 1964. 30.  Johnston, “Proposal for Enlarging and Improving the English Program at Anatolia College,” op. cit.; idem., The President’s Fall Report, Oct. 20, 1959; Oct. 17, 1961; Oct. 23, 1962; MBTAC, May 6, 1960; Chapman to Johnston, Dec. 27, 1961, with enclosure. 31.  H. Johnston to Chapman, Apr. 22, 1961; Minutes of Pinewood General Assembly, June 29, 1961 and June 28, 1962; Minutes of the Pinewood Board, Sept. 8, 1962, Dec. 10, 1973; MBTAC, Nov. 9, 1962; “American Sponsored Schools Summary Data Sheet,” Dec. 1962; President’s Fall Report, Oct. 24, 1963, A.C. archives. 32.  MECBT, Apr. 3, 1964. 33.  MBTAC, May 8, 1964; Chapman to Mary Ingle, June 1, 1965. 34.  Hayden to Chapman, July 1, Nov. 12, 1964; President’s Fall Report, Oct. 15, 1965. 35.  Hayden to Chapman, Aug. 25, Dec. 18, 1964; Jan. 14, 26, 29, Mar. 29, Apr. 1, May 19, 25, 1965; to Ingle, Dec. 18, 1964; Jan. 11, 1965; to Carl and Ruth Compton, Apr. 3, 1965; Chapman to Hayden, Sept. 24, 1965; President’s Fall Report, 1965. 36.  Stephens to Hayden, May 29, 1964; Feb. 18, 1965. 37.  Mary Ingle to Robert Hayden, Jan. 23, 1965; to “Dear Friends,” May 1965; to John Chapman, May 21, 1965; to Robert Musgrove, Sept. 24, 1965. 38. Chapman to Hayden, Sept. 3, 1964; Apr. 13, 1965; Stephens to Hayden, Feb. 5, 1965; Girls School Faculty to Board of Trustees, Mar. 29, 1965; quote from Compton to Hayden, Apr. 12, 1965; Anatolia alumni to Chapman, May 27, 1965; Chapman to Ingle, June 1, 1965; to Georgopapadakos, July 29, 1965, Hayden to Dean Arnold, Feb. 12, 1965; to Chapman, June 10, 1965; Culolias to Chapman, Oct. 3, 1965; President’s Fall Report, 1965; MBTAC, Apr. 28, 1967.



Notes to Pages 315–323

461

39.  MBTAC, May 14, 1965; Musgrove to Stephens, Nov. 6, 1965; Musgrove’s c.v.; President’s Fall Reports, 1965, 1966, 1971, A.C. archives. 40.  Hayden to Chapman, Mar. 28, 1968; MBTAC, Oct. 15, 1971. 41.  Chapman to Hayden, July 15, 1964; Sept. 24, 1965; to Ingle, June 1, 1965, op. cit. 42.  Hayden to Stephens, Feb. 14, Apr. 1, 1965; to Folts, May 13, 1965; to Chapman, Aug. 9, 1968; Chapman to Hayden, June 12, 1967; MECBT, July 29, 1968; MBTAC, Oct. 23, 1964; May 14, 1965; Apr. 29, 1966; May 3, 1968, A.C. archives. 43.  Hayden to Chapman, Jan. 28, 1966; Hayden, “Athens Report,” May 12–15, 1970, A.C. archives. As a nonprofit institution, Anatolia was tax exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Revenue Code. 44.  MBTAC, Oct. 23, 1964; May 3, 1968; Feb. 4, 1969; Oct. 15, 1971; Thiessen to Hayden, Feb. 9, 1965; Feb. 18, 1966; Apr. 5, 1971; quote from Hayden to Chapman, Mar. 7, 1967; President’s Fall Reports, 1968, 1969; Treasurer’s Report to Trustees, Oct. 1971. 45.  C. Compton to Hayden, Nov. 11, 1964; Hayden to C. Compton, Dec. 22, 1964; MBTAC, Apr. 29, 1966; President’s Report 1969. 46.  “The Story of a National Scholar,” c. 1969, A.C. archives. 47.  “National Scholarship Program, 1967–1968,” Nov. 16, 1967. 48.  President’s Fall Reports to the Board of Trustees, 1966, 1967, 1971; “Personal Memorandum” from D. Karademos to President R. Hayden, Dec. 28, 1967, op. cit.; Ad. C. mins., Mar. 5, 1968; Hayden to Benstead, Apr. 6, 1971. 49.  President’s Reports, 1965, 1971. 50.  Project Report, “Anatolia College Medical Program,” Mar. 1964; minutes of A.C. Medical Department meeting, Sept. 27, 1965. 51.  Hayden to Chapman and Stephens, Mar. 14, 1966; to Chapman, Mar. 30, 1970, Mar. 31, 1971; Anatolia College News, v. 1, no. 5, May 10, 1966; President’s Fall Report, Oct., 1966. 52. Alexis Dimaras and Baso Vasilou-Papageorgiou, [From the Pencil to the Computer, One Hundred Seventy Years of Greek Education] (Athens, 2008), 147–48; President’s Fall Reports, 1965, 1966. 53. Hayden to William Hamilton, U.S. Consul General, May 11, 1967, with enclosures, A.C. archives. 54.  Ad. C. mins., Nov. 7, 1967; President’s Fall Report, 1968; Richard Clogg, A Short History of Modern Greece (Cambridge, UK, 1979), 166–91. 55.  Hayden to Chapman, Mar. 26, 1968. 56.  Ministry of Education order no. 113654, Aug. 29, 1968; response by Hayden, Sept. 9, 1968; by Georgopapadakos, Sept. 10, 1968; Inspector General’s instruction no. 3852, Nov. 2, 1968; Hayden to Chapman, Sept. 5, 6, 13, 14, 20, 1968; personal communications from Allan Duane, July 20, 2010, June 5, 2012. 57.  Chapman to Greek ambassador, Sept. 16, Nov. 8, 1968; to Hayden, undated, c. 1969; Feb. 26, 1969; Hayden to Roswell McClelland, U.S. Embassy, Athens, Jan. 20, 1969; to Chapman, Mar. 2, 5, 1969; Minister of Education no. 1621 to Hayden, Mar. 4, 1969; Ad.C. mins., Nov. 6, 1968, Mar. 4, 1969. 58. President’s Annual Report to the Board of Trustees, Oct. 1969; MECBT, Mar. 24, 1969; Chapman to Hayden, May 27, 1969; Ad. C. mins., Mar. 4, 1969; Feb. 19, 1970; Sept. 22, Nov. 3, 1971; Sept. 29, 1972.

462

Notes to Pages 323–333

59.  Hayden to Chapman, Dec. 9, 1964; Jan. 26, 1968, Aug. 13, 1969, May 25, 1970; to Deputy Minister of Education, Mar. 13, 1969; MBTAC, Oct. 10, 1968; Oct. 17, 1969; Oct. 16, 1970; Oct. 15, 1971; “A Ten-Year Plan for the College,” MECBT, Mar. 2, 1970, Oct. 14, 1970; President’s Annual Reports to the Board of Trustees, Oct. 1970; Oct. 1971; President’s Comments to the Board, Oct. 16, 1970. 60. Ioannis Papinkis, [“‘Retrospective,’ Secondary Studies at Anatolia,1963–1969”], ms. (Thessaloniki, 2011). 61.  Karipidis, [As If It Were Yesterday], 186; President’s Annual Report to the Board of Trustees, Oct. 1971. 62.  Hayden to Stephens, Nov. 29, Dec. 7, 1970; MBTAC, May 16, 1969; MECBT, Jan. 21, 1971. 63. Report by Stratos Paraskevaides, Director, Alumni and Public Relations, to Mrs. Lorrin Riggs, Sept. 27, 1973; Ad. C. mins., Nov. 17, 1971; May 12, 1972; President’s Fall Report to the Board of Trustees, 1966, 1968, 1971. 64.  Personal communication from G. Hardouvelis, 2011. 65.  Ad. C. mins., May 13, 1966; Sept. 29, 1969; Dec. 6, 1972; Hayden to Chapman, Jan. 27, 1970; Aug. 5, 1971; Compton to Hayden, Nov. 9, 1970; Hayden to Compton, Jan. 26, 1971; MBTAC, Oct. 15, 1971; Nikos Varmazis, [Educational Testimony: Thirty-Eight Years in Secondary Education (1961–1999)] (Thessaloniki, 2002), 45–46. 66.  A.C. Catalogues, 1964–65, 1966–67; Hayden to Chapman, Jan. 14, 1965; President’s Annual Report to the Board of Trustees, Oct. 1971; MBTAC, Oct. 15, 1971. 67.  Chapman to E. Stephens, June 15, 1970; MBTAC, Oct. 16, 1970. 68.  Hayden to Chapman, “Confidential,” July 1, 1970. 69.  Hayden to Chapman, Feb. 12, 1968; to Exec. Comm., Feb. 23, 1968. Quote from Hayden to Exec. Comm., Mar. 2, 1970. 70.  Stephens to Hayden, Dec. 15, 31, 1970; Jan. 22, 1971; Hayden to Stephens, July 5, Dec. 28, 29, 1970; Feb. 4, Mar. 26, Apr. 7, 1971; to Chapman, Mar. 31, May 7, Aug. 5, 1971; to Ruth and Carl Compton, Dec. 20, 1971; to Lucas P. Kyrides, Jan. 25, 1972; C. Compton to Hayden, Nov. 9, 1970; MECBT, Nov. 21, 1970; Stephens’ report on visit to Greece, MBTAC, May 21, 1971. 71.  Preamble of the North Atlantic Treaty of Apr. 4, 1949; Clogg, Modern Greece, 186–99; for Presisdent Clinton’s 1999 address in Athens, Robert V. Keeley, The Colonels’ Coup and the American Embassy (University Park, PA, 2010), 205. 72.  MBTAC, Feb. 18, May 5, Oct. 13, 1972; MECBT, Jan 12, Feb. 12, 1972; Doris Riggs to Trustees, Apr. 29, 1972; Ad. C. mins., Dec. 6, 1972, A.C. archives. 73.  MBTAC, July 27, 1972; President’s Report, Oct. 1972. 74.  Ministry of Education, [Appointment of Director of Private High School], Feb. 16, 1972; Kennedy to Stephens, Apr. 30, 1972; Evangelos Kalfelis, Aristides Kyriakakis and Theodore Mavropoulos to Kennedy, Feb. 24, 1973, A.C. archives. 75.  Kennedy to Stephens, May 12, 1972, Feb. 7, 1974. 76.  MBTAC, May 4, 1973; MECBT, Mar. 2, 1974; Kennedy to Stephens, Feb. 15, Dec. 19, 1973; Jan. 18, 1974; Ad. C. mins., Mar. 15, Aug. 4, Nov. 29, 1972; Oct. 16, 23, Nov. 6, 8, 27, Dec. 11, 18, 1973; Jan. 8, 17, 22, 29, Mar. 19, May 28, 1974; A.C. teacher committee to administration, May 29, 1974. 77.  MBTAC, Sept. 13, 1973; MECBT, Sept. 17, 1973; President’s Report to Board of Trustees, Oct. 1973.



Notes to Pages 334–344

463

78.  Riggs to Trustees, Apr. 29, 1972, op.cit.; May 5, 1972; Kennedy to Stephens, Apr. 27, 29, 1972, Dec. 20, 1973; quote from Mar. 6, 1973; Stephens to Kennedy, May 7, 1972; Feb. 6, 1974; to Schoppert, July 15, 1974; Ad. C. mins., May 31, 1974. Stephens to All Members of the Anatolia Greek Faculty, June 9, 1974, with enclosed minutes of the meeting of June 1, 1974. 79.  MBTAC, Oct. 19, 1973; Ad. C. mins., Sept. 28, 1973, May 28, 1974. 80.  MECBT, Nov. 28, 1972; Mar. 2, 1974; President’s Report to Trustees, Oct. 1973, op. cit.; Stephens to Kennedy, Aug. 13, Sept. 24, 1973; Jan. 16, 28; Feb. 21, Mar. 21, 1974; to Rockwell, Feb. 27, 1973; to “Fellow Trustee,”, Apr. 1, 1974; Rockwell to Stephens, Feb. 22, 1974; Kennedy to Stephens, Sept. 7, 1973; Jan. 18, Feb. 6, Apr. 2, July 24, 1974. 81. MECBT, Mar. 2, 1974, op. cit.; Kennedy to Mrs. Lorrin (Doris) Riggs, D. Ingram, N. Landstrom, July 26, 1974. 82.  International Schools Foundation, “Overseas Schools Enrolling American Students,” New York, 1963; Asst. Director, Teacher Preparation and Placement, Princeton University to A.C., July 13, 1971, A.C. archives. 83. Papadopoulos entered MIT the following September with a full scholarship. Text of Papadopoulos’s speech, A.C. archives. 84.  Christopher M. Woodhouse, The Rise and Fall of the Greek Colonels (London, 1985), 126–69. 85.  Personal account by B. Alexiades; J. Kennedy to E. Stephens, July 24, 1974.

CHAPTER 10 FIGHTING FOR IDENTITY AND IDEALS (1974–1999) 1.  Presidential Search Committee to A.C. Trustees, June 25, 1974. 2.  The company was Litton Industries, whose controversial project in regional economic development is described in William W. McGrew, “Litton’s ‘Noble Experiment,’” Columbia Journal of World Business (Jan.–Feb. 1972), 65–75. 3.  A.C. Newsletter, Fall 1974; MBTAC, May 13, 1976. 4. Monteagle Stearns, Entangled Allies: U.S. Policy Toward Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus (New York, 1992), 68. An article in the far-left Athens newspaper Avghi attacked American education, Anatolia, and its new president. McGrew to Stephens, Aug. 21, Sept. 23, 1974; Jan. 8, 1975; A.C. Newsletter, Fall 1974. 5. McGrew to Stephens, Oct. 17, 1974; to Renos Kammenos, Secretary, Fulbright Committee, Cyprus, Oct. 18, 1974. 6.  A.C. Newsletter, Fall 1974; Winter 1975. 7.  A.C. Newsletter, Fall 1979; Anatolia Alumnus, no. 123, Dec. 2011–Feb. 2012, 36–38. 8.  Ad. C. mins., Oct. 17, 1978; Oct. 19, 1979; Sept. 20, 1984; The Anatolian (Winter 2005). 9. McGrew to Stephens, Feb. 28; Mar. 2, 9, 15, 1976; MECBT, Mar. 11, 1976; MBTAC, May 13, Oct. 29, 1976; Loukas Axelos, “Publishing Activity and the Movement of Ideas in Greece,” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 11, no. 2 (Summer 1984): 5–46.

464

Notes to Pages 345–358

10.  McGrew to Stephens, Apr. 6, 1977; Apr. 10, 1978; MECBT, May 5, June 8, 1977; Stephens to A.C. Faculty, June 8, 1977, to McGrew June 14, 1997. 11.  MBTAC, May 31, 1978; McGrew to Exec. Comm., Oct. 29, 1986. 12.  MBTAC, Feb. 7, 1975, 3; McGrew to Stephens, Feb. 18, 1975. 13.  Ministry of Education orders nos. 98490, Sept. 16, and 106231, Oct. 12, 1976; T. Mavropoulos to McGrew, Sept. 17, 1976; McGrew to Kaloyiannis, Sept. 11, 1976; to Mavropoulos, Sept. 23, 1976; to Stephens, Oct. 4, 1976; MECBT, Oct. 28, 1976. The new legislative measures were Law 309, Apr. 30, 1976, regulating general education, and Law 862, Sept. 1, 1977, pertaining to private schools. Former Boys School director, Anastasios Georgopapadakos, declined my invitation to come out of retirement to assume the lyceum directorship. 14.  President’s Report to Board of Trustees, Oct. 29, 1976. 15.  MECBT, Sept. 16, 1974; Oct. 26, 1978; Ad. C. mins., Sept. 28, 1979. 16.  A.C. Newsletter, Summer 1978; Ad. C. mins., Mar. 3, 1977; Sept. 21, 1979; Nov. 10, 1981; Nov. 16, 1982; McGrew to Leonidas Evangelides, Greek Foreign Ministry, Mar. 21, 1979; Kaloyannis to McGrew, Aug. 27, 1979. 17.  MECBT, Oct. 26, 1978; MBTAC, May 11, 1979; Ad. C. mins., Sept. 8, 19, Oct. 5, 1978. 18.  Stephens to McGrew, Aug. 18, 1976; McGrew to Stephens, Oct. 4, 1976, op. cit.; to Rossides, July 7, 1977. 19.  MBTAC, May 31, 1978; A.C. Newsletter, Summer 1978, 1. 20.  MBTAC, May 9, 1975; Oct. 29, 1976; Oct. 28, 1977; McGrew to Stephens, Feb. 21, 1976; MECBT, May 11, 1976; Oct. 26, 1978, Nov. 6, 1980. 21.  McGrew to Stephens, Jan. 8, 1975; to Gyftopoulos, Jan. 22, 1987; Norman Landstrom, “Governance of Anatolia College,” July 29, 1987. 22.  MECBT, Oct. 2, 17, 1980; McGrew to Gullion, Apr. 21, 1980; Stephens to McGrew, Oct. 1, 1980; A.C. Newsletter, Spring 1985; Bissell to Trustees, Oct. 17, 1980. 23.  MBTAC, Nov. 7, 1975; May 31, 1978; McGrew to Stephens, Sept. 15, 1975; MECBT, Oct. 28, 1982. 24.  MBTAC, Nov. 7, 1975; A.C. Newsletter, Spring 1976; Fall 1991. 25.  An outstanding example was scholarship student Theodore Theodosopoulos ’87, who placed first nationally in the mathematics competition in his junior and senior years and received a full scholarship to MIT. 26.  MBTAC, May 13, 1983; Apr. 23, 1994; President’s Report to Trustees, Oct. 1987, Sept. 1991. 27.  Ad. C. mins., Mar. 7, 1978; Nov. 16, Dec. 21, 1979; Feb. 11, 1987; Apr. 25, 1991; Co-education Committee Meeting Minutes, Jan. 22, Feb. 12, 1980; MBTAC, May 2, Nov. 7, 1980; Oct. 28, 1982. 28.  MBTAC, May 13, 1976. 29.  Attachment to Ad. C. mins., Jan. 11, 1979. 30.  A.C. Newsletter, Summer 1978; McGrew to Gullion, Apr. 21, 1980. Schoppert later headed the International School in The Hague and its counterpart in Warsaw. MBTAC, May 29–31, 1978. Draper returned to Thessaloniki in 1989 as president of the American Farm School. 31.  MBTAC, May 29–31, 1978, op. cit.; May 2, 1980, op. cit.; MECBT, Nov. 10, 1988.



Notes to Pages 358–366

465

32.  MBTAC, May 1984; “Proposal for Renovation of Stephens Hall,” 1988; Ad. C. mins., Oct. 6, 1988. 33.  McGrew to Doris Riggs, Oct. 27, 1975; June 6, 1980. 34. Stearns, Entangled Allies, op. cit. 35.  MBTAC, May 29–31, 1978, op. cit; Stephens to McGrew, Sept. 20, 1978. 36.  Penny Poole, “Private Education under Fire,” The Athenian (Athens, Mar. 1985), 21–22. 37.  Stephens to McGrew, Dec. 31, 1975; McGrew to Stephens, Jan. 20, 1976. Allen, Classical Spies, 258, 288, suggests that the newly formed CIA considered using American schools as covers for its agents in Greece. 38.  MECBT, Oct. 29, 1981; Sept. 30, 1982; May 2, 1984; MBTAC, Nov. 7, 1980; Apr. 23, Oct. 29, 1982; May 13, 1983; Mar. 1, 8, Apr. 12, May 18, Oct. 26, Nov. 29, 1984; May 10, 1985; Ad. C. mins., Feb. 15, June 1, 15, Sept. 6, 15, 29, Dec. 8, 1983; Feb. 2, 9, Sept. 20, Nov. 1, Dec. 6, 20, 1984; Jan. 24, 31, Mar. 7, Sept. 3, Oct. 9, Dec. 4, 1985; Greek Trustee minutes, Sept. 29, 1983, Dec. 18, 1984; June 17, 1985, Oct. 1, 1986, Apr. 29, 1987; McGrew to Gullion, Apr. 8 and 18, 1982; Jan. 10, Mar. 6, 16 and 26, 1984; Sept. 8, 1986; to Landstrom, Dec. 15, 1986, July 13, 1987; Papademas to Landstrom, Feb. 28, 1987. 39.  Evtychia K. Mouameletzi, [The Influence of Community Law upon Public and Private Education in Greece] (Thessaloniki, 1996), 35–43. 40. “Trustee Statement of Principles, Purposes and Policies of Anatolia College-1982,” March 1982, A.C. archives; Memorandum from Norman Landstrom to George Draper, “Legal Issues Involved in Anatolia Closing,” Apr. 28, 1982; Gullion to McGrew, May 24, July 12, 1982; McGrew to Gullion, July 26, 1982; May 3, July 2, 9 and 18, 1984; MECBT, June 23, Sept. 30, 1982; MBTAC, May 18, 1984. 41.  McGrew to Gullion, Jan. 31, July 5, 1983; Jan. 27, 1984; MBTAC, May 18, 1984; Ad. C. mins., June 8, 1984; Gullion to Ambassador Papoulias, July 26, 1984, Jan. 24, 1985; quote from McGrew to Trustees, Jan. 3, 1985; MECBT, Mar. 23, 1987. 42.  McGrew to Gullion, July 2, 5, 9, 18, 1985; Gullion to McGrew, Aug. 21, 1985; Memorandum of Meeting with the Ministry of Education, July 11, 1985; Sarbanes to McGrew, Aug. 2, 1985; McGrew to Sarbanes, July 17, 1985, Oct. 24, 1986; MBTAC, Nov. 1, 1985; Ad. C. mins., Sept. 2, 1987; Greek Trustees minutes, June 17, 1985, op. cit., Sept. 27, 1985. 43.  McGrew to Gullion, Jan. 25, 1982; Sept. 8, 1986; to Milt Kovner, MinisterCounselor, U.S. Embassy, Athens, May 3, 1982; to Gyftopoulos, Jan. 22, 1987; Ad. C. mins., Sept. 24, Oct. 1, 1986; Feb. 8, 1987; Dec. 8, 1988; Jan. 26, 1989; Greek trustees’ minutes, Oct. 1, 1986, Feb. 17, 1987; MECBT, Mar. 23, 1987; Mar. 13, May 11, 1989; MBTAC, May 12, 1989; McGrew, “Memorandum Concerning Draft Law on Private Education,” Nov. 1988, A.C. archives. 44.  “Anatolia Centennial Celebrations—Events in Greece”; President’s Report to Trustees, Oct. 1986; A.C. Centennial Edition Newsletter, Winter 1987; McGrew to Trustees, Jan. 26, 1988. The conference papers were published in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies (v. 4, no. 2, Oct. 1986). 45. “Easter Pilgrimage to Merzifon and the Pontus,” A.C. Centennial Edition Newsletter, Winter 1987, op. cit., 3–4. Not long after this visit, Merzifon’s mayor informed us that the military had evacuated the former campus. On a visit in 2005,

466

Notes to Pages 367–372

I found only one building, the former Alumni Hall, still in use for public offices; the others were leveled or derelict. The former hospital was later renovated for a public secondary school that began operation in 2012. 46.  President’s Report to Trustees, Oct. 1986, op. cit. 47.  A.C. Treasurer’s Report, May 6, 1977; Annual Institutional Report to ASHA, Feb. 14, 1990. 48.  Stephens to McGrew, July 18, Dec. 30, 1974; Mar. 17 and 26, 1975; Apr. 6, 1979; McGrew to Stephens, Jan. 8 and 10, 1975; MECBT, Nov. 6, 1980; Nov. 21, 1988; Sept. 11, 1989; Gullion, “Functions of Current Office Director,” June 2, 1982; McGrew to Gullion, July 1, 1980; Sept. 9, 1982; Gullion to McGrew, Oct. 3, 1980; Landstrom to McGrew, Feb. 9, Apr. 1, 1987; McGrew to Landstrom, Dec. 9, 1986; Apr. 22, July 14, 1987; Landstrom, “Governance of Anatolia College,” July 29, 1987; Tedwilliam Theodore to Julian Haynes, Apr. 19, 1988; McGrew to Gyftopoulos, Jan. 22, 1987, op. cit; to Haynes, June 6, Aug. 17, 23, Dec. 30, 1988, Feb. 7, 1989; to Development Committee, “Fundraising Trips in the United States,” May 1989; to Members of the Executive and Steering Committees, Apr. 15, 1994; Constantinides to Bissell, Mar. 28, 1994. 49.  A.C. Newsletter, Winter 1975; MECBT, May 11, 1976; Feb. 24, 1995; McGrew to trustees, Aug. 28, 1990; to Bissell, Aug. 23, 1990; Apr. 30, 1991; “Organizational Gifts 1/1/85 to 2/28/97,” A.C. archives. 50. MBTAC, May 13, 1976; May 6, 1995; “Organizational Gifts 1/1/85 to 2/28/97,” A.C. archives. 51.  McGrew to Irelands, Mar. 5, 1990; MBTAC, Nov. 12, 1994; MECBT, June 20, 1997. 52.  McGrew to Executive Committee, June 17, 1996; The Anatolian (Spring 2006). 53.  MECBT, Nov. 16, 1990; Mar. 29, 1993; Ad. C. mins., Oct. 11, 1984. 54.  For many years, David Ingram, Thomas Johnson, George Bissell, Charles E. Porter, Albert H. Elfner, III, Robert L. DeNormandie, Robert W. Uek and Nestor Nicholas, among others, safeguarded while augmenting Anatolia’s capital resources. MBTAC, May 11, 1979; Report of A.C. Investment Committee, Aug. 26, 1999. 55.  Ad. C. mins., Sept. 1, 1988; “Projections of Anatolia/ACHS Financial Needs 1993–1997,” Nov. 1, 1994; McGrew, “Anatolia’s Finances: The View from the College,” Apr. 15, 1994. 56. Angelos Billis was succeeded by Dr. Olympia Tziambiri, followed by Vasilis Takas ’69, Irini Kyrlangitsi ’66, and Elena Tousi. Public Relations Director Fofo Karalia coordinated the Friends’ activities until her retirement, after which she was elected its president in 1994. The Friends’ success prompted the Alumni Association to include greater financial support for Anatolia among its goals from the late 1990s. Minutes of Thessaloniki Trustees, Jan. 22, 1986; McGrew to Landstrom, Mar. 20, 1987; McGrew, “Report on Fundraising in Greece,” Apr. 1989; MBTAC, Apr. 23, 1994; Billis to Bissell, Feb. 16, 2000, with enclosures; Mariana Yemenetzi–Pangalou to Rea Samara, Jan. 20, 1995. 57. Robert Uek to Peter Rupprecht, July 25, 1994; President’s Report, 1997; “Overview of the FY 2000 Proposed Preliminary Budget for the High School, Secretarial School and Ancillary Activities.”



Notes to Pages 373–381

467

58.  The USAID/ASHA grant was awarded in 1972, but construction was delayed until 1974. An earlier grant (1964) designated for a gym had been diverted to other needs. MECBT, May 24, 1972; July 14, 1975; Annual Institutional Report to USAID, Oct. 6, 1977; MBTAC, Oct. 13, 1972; May 13, 1976; Oct. 28, 1977; A.C. Newsletter, Spring 1976. 59.  Presidents’ Reports, 1991, 1997, 1999. 60.  Julian Haynes to Board of Trustees, Oct. 23, 1989; MBTAC, May 6, 1995; President’s Report, 1997, 12. 61.  The agreement also provided that in lieu of rental payments to Anatolia, equivalent sums would be deposited in a special account to help finance facilities on a new location. MBTAC, May 9, Oct. 31, 1998; MECBT, May 6, 1999. 62.  [“Schools Which Stand Out”], Eleftherotypia, Sept. 14, 1990; President’s Report, Sept. 1991; MBTAC, Apr. 20, 1996; Alexis Dimaras, “Europe and the 1980’s: A Double Challenge for Greek Education.” in Richard Clogg, ed., Greece in the 1980’s (New York, 1983), 231–44. 63.  MBTAC, May 12, 1989; Nov. 19, 1996. Christoforidou authored the Anatolia Cookbook: A Selection of Favorite Pastry Recipes, printed by Anatolia College. 64.  MBTAC, Apr. 20, 1996. 65.  Ad. C. mins., Oct. 22, 1987; MBTAC, Apr. 20, 1996. 66. Anatolians who went on to musical careers included pianists Maria Xifilidou ’75 and George-Emmanuel Lazaridis ’96, both of who performed in the United States on tours arranged by the College; cellist Dimitris Patras ’77; orchestral director Haris Iliadis ’90; and violinist Christos Galilaias ’93. 67.  Ad. C. mins., Dec. 20, 1994; A.C. Newsletter, Fall 1991, 2; President’s Report, 1974–1999, op. cit., 8–9. 68.  The Anatolian, v. 2, no. 3, op. cit. 69.  The College took special pride in alumnus Dr. Demetris Pyrros ’79, who specialized in “disaster medicine,” was instrumental in founding the Greek branch of Doctors Without Borders, and received Anatolia’s Humanitarian and Social Service award in 1999. Athina Lambrinidou ’82 became a stalwart activist with Greenpeace. 70.  The College also reshaped its admissions procedures to accord favored status to children of Association members. A.C. Newsletter, Winter 1987, 4; Fall 1991, 4; MECBT, Mar. 13, 1989; President’s Report, 1997, op. cit., 13. 71.  Anastasia Karakasidou ’75, scholarship student at Anatolia, attended the College of Wooster with financial aid and earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Currently professor of anthropology at Wellesley College, her published research addresses issues of ethnic origins in northern Greece. Sabine Iatridou ’75 took her Ph.D. from MIT where she is professor of linguistics. Eleni Bastea ’76 attended Bryn Mawr College and gained a Ph.D. in the history of architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. The author of a prize-winning history of modern Athens, she holds a professorship at the University of New Mexico. Maria Mavroudi ’85 completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University and is professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley. In 2004 she was the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Genius Award for research on relations between the Byzantine and Arab worlds. Fotini (“Nina”) Papavasiliou ’88, after completing her first degree at Oberlin College, continued for a doctorate

468

Notes to Pages 381–387

in biology at Rockefeller University, where she became an associate professor. The recipient of many research awards, she heads the university’s laboratory of lymphocyte biology. Zizi A. Papacharissi ’90 took her first degree from Mt. Holyoke College and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin before becoming professor and head of the Department of Communications at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Philomila Tsoukala ’94 obtained a doctorate from Harvard Law School and is currently associate professor at Georgetown University Law School. Anna Greka ’94 took her medical degree and Ph.D. from Harvard University and is assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, while practicing internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. 72.  One estimate held that Greek households spent as much or more on cram schools and private lessons to prepare their children for university entrance exams as the state expended for all public secondary education in the 1980s and early 1990s. Stephanos Pesmazoglou, “Some Fallacies in Perceiving Greek University Education,” in Dimitris Keridis and Chryssostomos Sfatos, Greek Higher Education, Prospects for Reform (New York, 1998), 63–64. 73.  MBTAC, 1981; President’s Reports, Sept. 1991; 1997. The Greek National Statistical Service reported that enrollments in elementary schools fell by 27 percent between 1985 and 1996, with many schools closing. Kathimerini newspaper (Athens, Nov. 14, 1999), 36. 74.  President’s Report, 1997, 7; McGrew to Trustee Exec. Comm., Dec. 19, 1997.

CHAPTER 11 ANATOLIA RETURNS TO HIGHER EDUCATION (1981–1999) 1.  Howard Johnston, “Some Preliminary Thoughts for Establishing in Northern Greece a High-Level School for Young Business Executives,” Jan. 1, 1964, A.C. archives; MECBT, Jan. 15, 1974. 2. [Greek Government Gazette], no. 451, Oct. 9, 1935; Gregory M. Sifakis, “The Impasse of Greek Higher Education,” in Speros Vryonis, Jr., ed., Greece on the Road to Democracy: From the Junta to PASOK 1974–1986 (New Rochelle, NY, 1991), 285–304. Cf. “‘Chaos’ in Greece,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 4, 1994, A45–46. 3.  MBTAC, Oct. 26, 1979; Nov. 7, 1980; May 4, 1981. 4.  MBTAC, May 4, Oct. 30, 1981; Oct. 29, 1982; Oct. 26, 1984; McGrew to Gullion, Aug. 5, 1981. 5.  MBTAC, May 13, 1983; Oct. 26, 1984; Nov. 1, 1985; McGrew to Gullion, Aug. 24, 1983, Sept. 25, 1985; “Implementing the Long Range Plan: Baccalaureate Level Education at Anatolia College,” Nov. 11, 1988, A.C. archives. 6.  MECBT, Dec. 4, 1980; “Anatolia College: School of Business Administration and Liberal Arts,” April 1982, A.C. archives. 7.  MBTAC, Oct. 26, 1984, op. cit. 8.  MBTAC, May 13, 1983; MECBT, Jan. 7, 1982; McGrew to Gullion, Feb. 2 and 7, Mar. 3, 1983; Dec. 30, 1985.



Notes to Pages 387–395

469

  9.  McGrew to Exec. Comm., May 2, 1984; to Haynes, Aug. 8, 1988; Ministry of Education to Thessaloniki Office of Foreign Schools, [“Reply to Request for Information about Anatolia”], Apr. 18, 1984; Koliopoulos, “Review of SBALA’s Performance Thus Far and Prospects for the Immediate Future,” Sept. 30, 1987. In response to protests by public university students, the government forced the closing of the privately operated Athens branch of a French university (Sorbonne). Mouameletzi, [Influence of Community Law], 51–56. 10. McGrew, “Whither SBALA?” May 1988, A.C. archives; SBALA, ACHS, ACT Catalogues. 11. MBTAC, Oct. 28, 1978; McGrew to Gullion, Aug. 5, 1981; July 28, 1983; to Trustees, July 11, 1989; Report of the President, 1986; “New Trends in Modern Greek Historiography” (MGSA Occasional Papers, 1, Hanover, NH,1982); “Greece and Asia Minor,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 4, no. 2 (Oct. 1986). 12.  “Baccalaureate Level Education at Anatolia College, A Status Report and Recommendation to the Anatolia Board of Trustees,” May 11, 1990; President’s Report, 1990–1991; “Progress Report and Forecast to Year 2000,” Mar. 1995, A.C. archives. 13.  Cook to McGrew, Dec. 13, 1985; Feb. 19, 1991; May 9, 1994; Jan. 12, 1996; ACHS, “Report of Eligibility,” Feb. 1992; MECBT, Nov. 12, 1994; McGrew to Haynes, May 13, 1991; to Cook, Mar. 5, 1993; to Exec. Comm., Apr. 8, 1996; MBTAC, Apr. 20, 1996; “American College in Salonika Offers Liberal-Arts Education,” CHE, May 1994, A46. 14. A.C. Physical Planning Comm., “Conclusions and Recommendations for Campus Development,” 1992; J. E. Robinson, “Summary of Recommendations to Anatolia College,” April 1992; MBTAC, June 14, 1993. 15.  McGrew to Exec. Comm., Mar. 29, 1993; MECBT, Nov. 12, 1994; Apr. 15, 1995; MBTAC, Oct. 9, 1995; “Status of Financing of New School Building and Gatehouse,” Alexiades to Uek, Sept. 17, 1996. 16.  Carol K. DiPrete, “Anatolia College Library,” June 1994; McGrew to Exec. Comm., June 17, 1996; to ACT Faculty Development Committee, “Long-Range Planning for ACT,” Feb. 6, 1997; to Uek, Apr. 24, 1997. 17.  [“Report of the Committee of Legal Experts Assigned by the Ministry of Education to Examine the Legal Possibilities for Private Universities in Greece,”], [Macedonia newspaper] (Nov 2, 1990); McGrew to Exec. Comm., Nov. 5, 1990; President’s Athens Trip Report, Mar. 19–22, 1991; OECD Examiners’ Report, “Educational Policy Review: Greece,” Athens, 1996, 8, 34–47. 18. McGrew to Exec. Comm., Feb. 3, 1992; idem, “The American College of Higher Studies and Its Legal Context: Opportunities, Constraints and Strategies,” Feb. 1996; OECD Examiners’ Report, op. cit., 8. 19.  McGrew to Ambassador Niles, Dec. 4, 1994; Mar. 4, Oct. 29, Nov. 8, 1996; to Ambassador Burns, Nov. 23, 1998; AACG, “Statement of Purpose” and “Criteria for Membership,” June 6, 1997. Athens College and College Year in Athens joined AACG as Associate Members. 20. McGrew, “ASHA and Its Legal Context: Opportunities, Constraints and Strategies,” Feb. 1996, A.C. archives. 21.  MBTAC, Apr. 23, 1994; Overview of ACT 1997–1998 Proposed Final Budget, MECBT, Nov. 3, 1997; MBTAC, Oct. 19, 1996.

470

Notes to Pages 395–401

22.  Self-Study Submitted to New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, 1997, 4. Cf. Academic Dean Deborah Brown Kazazis, “End of Year Report,” 1995–1996; idem., “From Ground Zero: Building a Liberal Arts College in the Late 20th Century,” Journal of Liberal Arts, v. 5, no. 1 (Feb. 1999): 11–44. 23.  McGrew to Gyftopoulos, Oct. 30, 1995; ACT Faculty Advisory Committee, “Revised By-Laws,” Feb. 17, 1997; Dr. Archontis L. Pantsios, FAC Chair, “Summary of Major Themes/Accomplishments of FAC during the Last 3 Academic Years,” June 18, 1998. 24.  “Progress Report and Forecast to Year 2000,” op. cit.; ACT Catalogue 1998– 1999, op. cit.; “Business Liaison/Careers Office End of Year Report 1997–98”; Graduate Record Office, “Year-End Report 1998–1999”; College Council Meeting Minutes, May 21, 1999. 25.  President’s Report 1997. Co-sponsors of the conference were the Lemnitzer Center for NATO Studies at Kent State University; the European Union Studies Assoc. at the University of Pittsburgh; and the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). 26.  “Long-Range Planning for ACT,” Feb. 6, 1997; MECBT, Feb. 10, 1997; MBTAC, Feb. 22, 1997. 27.  Dr. Malcolm Forbes, “Evaluation Team Report of ACHS after Biennial Visit to Campus Oct. 22–25, 1995”; ACT Self-Study 1997, 31, 95. Quote from report by NEASC Evaluation Team following visit to ACT, Nov. 9–12, 1997, A.C. archives. 28. MECBT, June 20, 1996; Walter F. Eggers, Chair, NEASC Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, to McGrew, Mar. 24, 1998. 29. McGrew to Gyftopoulos and Clymer, “By-Law Modification to Provide Larger Role for ACT,” July 12, 1996; to Exec. Comm., Oct. 14, 1996; to Gyftopoulos, Mar. 30, Apr. 30, 1998; to Walter F. Eggers, Aug. 24, 1998; MBTAC, May 9, 1998; Bissell to Board of Trustees, June 25, 1998; “Appeal of ACT to the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, NEASC,” Sept. 25, 1998; Joseph Short to McGrew, Oct. 26, 1998. 30.  Walter F. Eggers to McGrew, Oct. 15, 1998; MBTAC, Oct. 31, 1998, op. cit.; June 16, 1999. The other accredited institution was Deree College in Athens. 31.  MBTAC, May 9, Oct. 31, 1998; Meeting of the ACT Governing Comm., Oct. 26, 1999; The Anatolian, v. 2, no. 3, Oct. 2000. 32.  MBTAC, May 9, 1998, op. cit.; June 16, 1999; Summary Report on 1999–2000 Academic Year, Aug. 2000. 33.  President’s Report 1997, 11; ACT Self-Study 1997, vii; OECD, “Educational Policy Review: Greece.” An annual rating of universities internationally showed the standing of Greek public institutions to have declined throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century. London Times, World University Rankings, 2012. Cf. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, “Academic Ranking of World Universities,” 2010. 34.  National Statistical Service of Greece, “Population of Greece by Sex and Age Groups, 1981 and 1991 Censuses,” Statistical Yearbook of Greece (Athens, 1995), 59; “Long-Range Planning for ACT”; McGrew to Exec. Comm.; “Projected Costs for



Note to Page 404

471

New ACT Library” minutes of ACT Governing Comm., Oct. 25, 1999; President’s Report 1974–1999, 10–11, 17.

EPILOGUE (1999–2014) 1.  Compton’s speech, 1969, A.C. archives.

} Selected Bibliography

I. PRIMARY SOURCES American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Papers. Documents administered by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Anatolia College Archives. ———. Administrative Council Minutes. ———. American College of Higher Studies, annual catalogues. ———. American College of Thessaloniki, annual catalogues. ———. American College of Thessaloniki, Self-Study, 1997. ———. Anatolia Alumnus. Alumni Association publication. ———. Anatolia College, annual catalogues. ———. Anatolia College Bulletin. ———. Anatolia College Newsletter. ———. The Anatolian. Student yearbook. ———. Director’s Book. Anatolia College student directory, Merzifon, 1886–1921. ———. [Directory of the American College “ANATOLIA,” 1886–1986.] ———. In Focus. Student periodical. ———. Journal of Liberal Arts. ———. Minutes of the Board of Trustees of Anatolia College. ———. Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of Anatolia College. ———. On Campus. Student periodical. ———. Pegasus. Student literary magazine. ———. President’s Reports. ———. School of Business Administration and Liberal Arts (SBALA), annual catalogues.

473

474

Selected Bibliography

Barton, James L, compiler. “Turkish Atrocities”: Statements of American Missionaries on the Destruction of Christian Communities in Ottoman Turkey, 1915–1917. Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute, 1998. Dimaras, Alexis, ed. [The Reform That Didn’t Happen]. Athens, 1973. Great Britain. Parliament. The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915– 1916. Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, by Viscount Bryce. Arnold Toynbee, ed., Miscellaneous no. 31. London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1916. Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Documents on the History of the Greek Jews, ed. by Photini Constantopoulou and Thanos Veremis. Athens: Kastaniotis Editions, 1998. The Missionary Herald. Published by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, from 1821. Boston. Princeton University Archives. “Anatolia College, Marsovan, Turkey, 1885.” Sarafian, Ara, ed. “Turkish Atrocities.” Statements of American Missionaries on the Destruction of Christian Communities in Ottoman Turkey, 1915–1917. Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute, 1998. “To President Emeritus George E. White D.D., On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Anatolia College.” The Class of 1936. Unpublished. Thessaloniki, 1936. United States Government. National Archives, Record Group 59, Records of the Department of State.

II. MONOGRAPHS Agapidis, Ioannis. [Greek Evangelical Communities in the Pontus]. Thessaloniki, 1948. Aghnides, Thanassis. The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Light of the Treaty of Lausanne. New York, 1964. Allen, Harold B. Come Over Into Macedonia: The Story of a Ten-Year Adventure in Uplifting a War-Torn People. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1943. Allen, Susan Hueck. Classical Spies: American Archeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. Anatolia College, Merzifoun. Basle-Zurich: Manissadjian and Co., 1906. Andrew, John A. III. Rebuilding the Christian Commonwealth. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976. Antoniou, Panayiotis. [“The American College ‘Anatolia’ 1924–1940: From Merzifon to Thessaloniki”]. Unpublished graduate degree thesis. Thessaloniki, 1997. Arpee, Leon. The Armenian Awakening: A History of the Armenian Church, 1820– 1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1909. Association of Industrialists of Northern Greece. [1960–1990: The Golden Era of the Industrial Development of Thessaloniki]. Thessaloniki, 2011. Augustinos, Gerasimos. The Greeks of Asia Minor: Confession, Communities, and Ethnicity in the Nineteenth Century. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1992.



Selected Bibliography

475

Baerentzen, Lars, John O. Iatrides, and Ole L. Smith, eds. Studies in the History of the Greek Civil War 1945–1949. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1987. Balakian, Peter. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response. New York: Harper, 2003. Baronian, Haig. Barefoot Boy from Anatolia. 1983. Barton, James L. Daybreak in Turkey. Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1908. ———. The Story of Near East Relief (1915–1930): An Interpretation. New York: Macmillan, 1930. Bierstadt, Edward H. The Great Betrayal. New York: 1924. Bliss, Rev. Edwin M. Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities. New York: 1896. Bowman, Steven, ed. The Holocaust in Salonika: Eyewitness Accounts. New York: Bloch Publishing, 2002. ———. Jewish Resistance in Wartime Greece. London, Portland, OR: Valentine Mitchell, 2006. ———. The Agony of Greek Jews, 1940–1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Bulbulian, Berge. The Fresno Armenians: History of a Diaspora Community. Fresno, CA: California State University Press, 2001. Buxton, Noel and Rev. Harold Buxton. Travel and Politics in Armenia. New York, 1914. Cassimatis, Louis P. American Influence in Greece, 1917–1929. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988. Childs, W. J. Across Asia Minor by Foot. New York: Dodd & Mead Co., 1917. Clark, Bruce. Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions That Forged Modern Greece and Turkey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Clogg, Richard. A Short History of Modern Greece. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979. ———, ed. Bearing Gifts to Greeks: Humanitarian Aid to Greece in the 1940s. Hampshire, UK: St. Anthony’s Press, 2008. Close, David H. Greece Since 1945: Politics, Economy and Society. Edinburgh: Routledge Publishing, 2002. Compton, Carl C. The Morning Cometh: 45 Years with Anatolia College. New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1986. Compton, Carl C. The Morning Cometh: 45 Years with Anatolia College. Supplemented by Carl Compton’s Letters to His Wife Ruth. Athens: Lucy Braggiotti, 2008. Compton, William R. “Reminiscences of Anatolia in the Early 1950s.” Unpublished manuscript, January 2002. ———, ed. “Supplement to Ruth Compton’s Memoir.” Unpublished manuscript, April 2003. ———, ed. “Events from the Lives of Carl and Ruth Compton as Recorded in Their Own Words.” Unpublished manuscript, 2008. Couloumbis, T. A, J. A. Petropulos, and H. H. Psomiades. Foreign Interference in Greek Politics. New York: Pella Press, 1976. Couvaras, Costas G. Photo Album of the Greek Resistance. San Francisco: Wine Press, 1978. ———. O.S.S. With the Central Committee of E.A.M. San Francisco: Wine Press, 1982.

476

Selected Bibliography

Couzinos, Efthymios. Twenty-Three Years in Asia Minor (1899–1922). New York: Vantage Press, 1969. Curtis, William Eleroy. Around the Black Sea. New York, 1911. Daniel, Robert L. American Philanthropy in the Near East, 1920–1960. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1970. Davis, Homer W., ed. Greece Fights: The People behind the Front. New York: American Friends of Greece, 1942. ———. The Story of Athens College: The First Thirty-five Years (1925–1960). Athens: Athens College Press, 1992. Deringil, Selim. The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998. Diamandouros, Nikiforos et al., eds., Hellenism and the First Greek War of Liberation (1821–1830): Continuity and Change. Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1976. Dimaras, Alexis and Vaso Vasilou-Papageorgiou. [From the Chalk to the Computer: 1830–2000, One Hundred Years of Greek Education with Words and Pictures]. Athens: Metaixmio, 2008. Dimitriades, Vasilis. [Topography of Thessaloniki during the Era of Turkish Rule, 1430–1912]. Thessaloniki: Society of Macedonian Studies, 1983. Eliot, Charles. Turkey in Europe. 2nd ed. London: Edward Arnold, 1965. Faroqhi, Suraiya. Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000. Field, James A. America and the Mediterranean World, 1776–1882. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969. Fotiades, Costas. The Ethnic and Religious Consciousness of the Greeks of Pontus. Thessaloniki, 1996. Fotiou, Thanasis S. [Terrorism in Greece: The Bloody Path of Fritz Shubert and the Greek “Team of Hunters” in Occupied Crete and Macedonia]. Thessaloniki: Epikentro, 2011. Frazee, Charles. The Orthodox Church and Independent Greece 1821–1852. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Freely, John. A History of Robert College, the American College for Girls, and Bogazici University. 2 vols. Istanbul: YKY, 2000. Gondicas, Dimitri, and Charles Issawi, eds. Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy and Society in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1999. Goodsell, Fred F. You Shall Be My Witnesses. Boston: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1959. Grabill, Joseph L. Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy 1810–1927. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971. Greene, Rev. Joseph K. Leavening the Levant. Boston: Pilgrim’s Press, 1916. Hall, William H., ed. Reconstruction in Turkey. A Series of Reports Compiled for the American Committee of Armenian and Syrian Relief. New York: Private publication, 1918. Hamlin, Cyrus. Among the Turks. New York: American Tract Society, 1877. ———. My Life and Times. 2nd ed. Boston and Chicago, 1893.



Selected Bibliography

477

Harris, Paul William. Nothing but Christ: Rufus Anderson and the Ideology of Protestant Foreign Missions. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Hassiotis, Ioannis, K., ed. Greece and Great Britain during World War I. Thessaloniki, 1985. ———, ed. The Jewish Communities of Southeastern Europe, from the Fifteenth Century to the End of World War II. Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1997. ———, ed. Queen of the Worthy: Thessaloniki, History and Culture. 2 vols. Thessaloniki: Paratiritis, 1997. ———, ed. The Armenian Community of Thessaloniki: History, Present Situation and Prospects. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 2005. Hekimoglou, Evangelos A. [Thessaloniki, Turkish Rule and the Interwar Period]. Thessaloniki, 1995. Hill, Patricia Ruth. The World Their Household: The American Woman’s Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870–1920. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985. Horton, George. The Blight of Asia. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926. Hovanissian, Richard G., ed. The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, vol II. Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. ———, ed. Remembrance and Denial: the Case of the Armenian Genocide. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999. ———, ed. Armenian Sebastia/Sivas and Lesser Armenia. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2004. Hutchinson, William R. Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Iatrides, John O., ed. Ambassador MacVeagh Reports: Greece, 1933–1947. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. ———, ed. Greece in the 1940s: A Nation in Crisis. Hanover, NH: UPNE, 1981. Inalcik, Halil, ed. An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, vol. 2: 1600–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. International Survey Committee. International Survey of the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Association. New York, 1932. Kaiser, Hilmar, ed. Marsovan 1915: The Diaries of Bertha Morley. 2nd ed., Reading, UK: Taderon Press, 2000. Kalfas, Antonis G. and Paris A. Papageorgiou. [The Evangelical Settlement of Katerini (1923–2000)]. Katerini, Greece: Greek Evangelical Church of Katerini, 2001. Karapidis, Angelos. [As if It Were Yesterday . . . Thessaloniki 1945–1960. Reminiscences from the Childhood and Adolescent Years]. Thessaloniki, 2008. Kariotis, Theodore C., ed. The Greek Socialist Experiment: Papandreou’s Greece 1981–1989. New York: Pella Publishing Company, 1992. Karpat, Kemal H. The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, Faith and Community in the Late Ottoman State. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Keeley, Edmund. The Salonika Bay Murder: Cold War Politics and the Polk Murder. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. Keeley, Robert V. The Colonels’ Coup and the American Embassy. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.

478

Selected Bibliography

Kevorkian, Raymond. The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011. King, Charles. The Black Sea: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Koliopoulos, John. Greece and the British Connection, 1935–1941. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. ———. Plundered Loyalties: Axis Occupation and Civil Strife in Greek West Macedonia, 1941–1949. London: Hurst & Co., 1999. Kontogiorgi, Elizabeth. Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Rural Settlement of Refugees 1920–1930. Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 2006. Lazaridou, Despina, G. [Recollections and Events of a Lifetime]. Thessaloniki, 1995. Lewis, Alice K. Shnorhig, an Armenian Story. Private publication, 1977. Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. 2nd ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1968. Lewkowicz, Bea. The Jewish Community of Salonica: History, Memory, Identity. London and Portland, OR: Valentine Mitchell, 2006. Levy, Avigdor, ed. Jews, Turks, Ottomans: A Shared History, Fifteenth through the Twentieth Century. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002. Lovejoy, Esther Pohl. Certain Samaritans. New York: Macmillan, 1927. Mango, Andrew. Ataturk. London: John Murray Publishers Ltd., 1999. Marden, Lucy H. M. Jesse Krekore Marden, 1872–1949: Missionary Physician. Claremont, CA: Courier Press, 1950. Marder, Brenda L. Stewards of the Land: The American Farm School and Greece in the Twentieth Century. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004. Mathiopoulos, Vasos P. [Illustrations from the Occupation]. 4th ed., Athens: Ermis, 2006. Mavrocordatos, George Th. Stillborn Republic: Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece, 1922–1936. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983. May, Rollo. My Quest for Beauty. Dallas, TX: Saybrook Publishing, 1983. Mazower, Mark. Inside Hitler’s Greece: the Experience of Occupation 1941–1944. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993. ———, ed., After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943–1960. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000. ———. Salonika, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950. London: Harper Perennial, 2004. McLoughlin, William G. Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607–1977. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Mears, Eliot Grinnell. Modern Turkey: A Politico-Economic Interpretation 1908–1923. New York: Macmillan, 1924. ———. Greece Today: The Aftermath of the Refugee Impact. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1929. Merrill, John E. “Christian-Muslim Relations in Central Turkey and North Syria, 1900–1940,” ed. by Fred Goodsell (1956), ABC, Manuscript History of Missions, Film 89, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Millard, Ruth Tracy. A Brief Biography of Charles Chapin Tracy, Founder of Anatolia College. Private publication, c. 1960. Miller, James Edward. The United States and the Making of Modern Greece. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009. 



Selected Bibliography

479

Morgenthau, Henry. Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1918. ———. I Was Sent to Athens. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co 1929. Mott, John R. The Evangelization of the World in this Generation. London, 1900. Mouameletzi, Evtychia K. [The Influence of Community Law upon Public and Private Education in Greece]. Thessaloniki: Sakkoula Publications, 1996. Nalbandian, Louise. The Armenian Revolutionary Movement. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1963. Neil, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions. London: Penguin Books, 1964. The One Hundredth Anniversary of the Haystack Prayer Meeting. Boston: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1907. Palmer, Alan. The Gardeners of Salonika. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965. Papageorgiou, Sophi N. [American Missionaries in Greece 1820–1850]. Athens: Dodoni Press, 2001. Papamichalopoulos, Konstantinos N. [Travels in the Pontos]. Athens, 1903. Papinkis, Ioannis, A. [“’Retrospective’, Secondary Studies at Anatolia, 1963– 1969.”] Unpublished, Thessaloniki, 2011. Pentzopoulos, Dimitri. The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and Its Impact on Greece. Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1962. Prime, E. D. G. Forty Years in the Turkish Empire, or, Memoirs of Rev. William Goodell, D.D., 4th ed. New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1877. Psomiades, Harry J. The Eastern Question: The Last Phase. 2nd ed. New York, 2000. Pye, Ernest, ed. Charlotte R. Willard of Merzifon, Her Life and Times. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1933. Ramsay, W. M. Impressions of Turkey during Twelve Years’ Wanderings. London: C. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897. Riggs, Alice S. “A History of Anatolia College 1933–1950.” Unpublished, c. 1967. Condensed version published by Anatolia College Alumni Association, Thessaloniki, 2007. Riggs, Charles T. “History of the Merzifon Station.” ABC: vol. 31:3, Houghton Library, Harvard University, c. 1939. ———. “Historical Sketch of Aintab (Gaziantep) Station.” ABC: vol. 31:3, Houghton Library, Harvard University, undated. ———. “The Work of the American Board among the Greeks.” ABC: Manuscript History of Missions, film 89, Houghton Library, Harvard University, 1948. Riggs, Henry H. “Turkey, 1910–1942.” ABC: vol. 31a, Jan. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Jan. 1942. Ross, Frank A., C. Luther Fry, and Elbridge Sibley. The Near East and American Philanthropy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1929. Rossides, Eugene T., ed. The Truman Doctrine of Aid to Greece: A Fifty-Year Retrospective. New York: The Academy of Political Science; and Washington, DC: The American Hellenic Institute, 1998. ———, ed. Greece’s Pivotal Role in World War II and Its Importance to the U.S. Today. Washington, DC: American Hellenic Institute Foundation, 2001. Runciman, Stephen. The Fall of Constantinople 1453. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1965.

480

Selected Bibliography

Salt, Jeremy. Imperialism, Evangelism and the Ottoman Armenians, 1878–1896. London: C. Hurst & Co, 1993. Sciaky, Leon. Farewell to Salonica: Portrait of an Era. New York: Current Books, 1946. Shaw, P. E. American Contacts with the Eastern Churches, 1820–1870. Chicago: American Society of Church History, 1937. Smith, Michael Llewellyn. Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor 1919–1922. 2nd ed. London: C. Hurst & Co. 1998. Stavrianos, L. S. The Balkans since 1453. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958. Stearns, Monteagle. Entangled Allies: U.S. Policy Toward Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1992. Stefanidis, Giannis. Stirring the Greek Nation: Political Culture, Imperialism and AntiAmericanism in Greece, 1945–1967. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007. Stephens, Everett and Mary. Survival against All Odds: The First 100 Years of Anatolia College. New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1986. Stone, Frank Andrews. Academies for Anatolia: A Study of the Rationale, Program and Impact of the Educational Institutions Sponsored by the American Board in Turkey: 1830–1980. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984. Strong, William E. The Story of the American Board; an Account of the First Hundred Years of ABCFM. Boston: ABCFM, c. 1910. Telidis, Nikos and Afroditi. [Panorama, Life and Memories There]. Thessaloniki, 2005. Temple, Rev. Daniel H. Life and Letters of Rev. Daniel Temple, for Twenty-Three Years a Missionary of the ABCFM in Western Asia. Boston: Congregational Board of Publications, 1855. Theodore, D. E. The Sacrificials: Part of an Autobiography Depicting the Life of Minorities in a War Torn Country. Boston: Branden Press, 1970. Toynbee, Arnold. The Western Question in Greece and Turkey. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1922. Tracy, Charles, C. Talks on the Veranda in a Far-Away Land. Boston and Chicago: Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Society, 1893. Tsouka-Fountoukidou, Fanoula. [Pylea with the Passage of Centuries—History]. Thessaloniki, 1997. Vacalopoulos, Apostolos. A History of Thessaloniki. Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1972. Vaklavas, Byron. [As If Yesterday . . . 40 Years Ago, Memories of 7 Years]. Thessaloniki, 1994. Valavanis, Georgios K. [Contemporary General History of the Pontus]. Thessaloniki, 1986. Varmazis, Nikos D. [Educational Testimony, Thirty-Eight Years in Secondary Education (1961–1999): Events, Individuals and Experiences]. Thessaloniki, 2002. The Waldheim Report. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1993. Washburn, George. Fifty Years in Constantinople, and Recollections of Robert College. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1909. West, Maria A. The Romance of Missions. New York: D. F. Randolph & Co., 1875.



Selected Bibliography

481

White, George. Charles Chapin Tracy, Missionary, Philanthropist, Educator, First President of Anatolia College. Boston and Chicago: Pilgrim Press, 1918. ———. Adventuring with Anatolia College. 1st ed. Grinnell, IA: Herald-Register Publishing Co., 1940. Woodhouse, Christopher M. The Story of Modern Greece. London: Faber and Faber, 1968. ———. The Rise and Fall of the Greek Colonels. London: Olympic Marketing Corp., 1985. Xanthopoulos, Nikos. [Who Was to Blame? Civil War 1941–1944]. Thessaloniki, 1973. Yapp, M. E. The Making of the Modern Near East. London and New York: Longman, 1987. Yannakopoulos, Georgos A., ed. The Pontos of the Hellenes. Athens: Efesos Publishers, c. 2003. Ziogou-Karasteriou, Sidiroula. [Educational Issues in Thessaloniki, 19th and 20th Centuries]. Thessaloniki, 2006.

III. ARTICLES Akgun, Secil. “The Turkish Image in the Reports of American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire,” The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, v. 13, no. 2 (1989), 91–105. Augustinos, Gerasimos. “‘Enlightened’ Christians and the ‘Oriental’ Churches: Protestant Missions to the Greeks in Asia Minor, 1820–1860,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, v. 4, no. 2 (Oct. 1986), 129–42. Babington, Douglas. “Hemingway’s Wartime Ritual of Retreat,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, v. 4, no. 2 (Oct. 1986), 85–97. Brown Kazazis, Deborah. “From Ground Zero: Building a Liberal Arts College,” Journal of Liberal Arts, v. 5, no. 1 (Feb. 1999), 11–44. Bryer, Anthony A. M. “The Pontic Revival and the New Greece,” in N. P. Diamandouros, ed., Hellenism and the First Greek War of Liberation: Continuity and Change. Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies (1976), 171–99. Chater, Melville. “History’s Greatest Trek,” National Geographic Magazine, v. 48, no. 5 (Nov. 1925), 533–90. Davison, Roderic H. “The Armenian Crisis: 1912–14,” American History Review, 53 (Apr. 1948), 481–505. ———. “Turkish Attitudes and Christian-Muslim Equality in the 19th c.,” American History Review, 59 (1954), 844–64. Dimaras, Alexis. “The Movement for Reform: An Historical Perspective,” Comparative Education Review, v. 22, no. 1 (Feb. 1978), 11–20. ———. “Europe and the 1980’s: A Double Challenge for Greek Education,” in Richard Clogg, ed., Greece in the 1980’s. New York: St. Martin’s Press (1983), 231–44. Dwight, H. G. “Saloniki,” National Geographic Magazine, v. 30 (July–Sept. 1916), 203–32. “Education in Greece Today: A Symposium,” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, v. 8, nos. 1–2 (Spring-Summer 1981).

482

Selected Bibliography

Giannuli, Dimitra. “‘Errand of Mercy’: American Women Missionaries and Philanthropists in the Near East, 1820–1930,” Balkan Studies, v. 39, no. 2 (1998), 223–62. Hatzikyriakides, Kyriakos. “The Mines of the Pontic Greeks,” in Georgios A. Yiannakopoulos, ed., The Pontos of the Hellenes. Athens: Efesos Publications (undated), 253–78. Herrick, George. “How to Win Moslem Races,” in Methods of Mission Work among Moslems. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co. (1906), 158–68. Heyd, Uriel. “The Later Ottoman Empire in Rumelia and Anatolia,” The Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1A, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (1970), 354–73. Hovannisian, Richard G. “Armenians in Asia Minor: The Final Phase, 1878–1923,” Paper presented at a conference, “Greece and Asia Minor,” Anatolia College (July 1985). Iatriades, John O. “Missionary Educators and the Asia Minor Disaster: Anatolia College’s Move to Greece,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, vol. 4, no. 2 (1986), 143–57. Jackson, Richard L. “The Role of U.S. Colleges Abroad: Anatolia as a Case Study,” Mediterranean Quarterly, v. 10, no. 4 (Fall 1999), 24–43. Kiskira, Constantia. “Evangelizing the Orient: New England Womanhood in the Ottoman Empire, 1830–1930,” Archivum Ottomanicum, 16 (1998), 279–94. ———. [“Thessaloniki in 1847 and the First American Penetration of the Balkans”], [City of the Thessalonians], v. 6 (Oct. 2001), 107–22. Kitromilides, Paschalis M., and Alexis Alexandris. “Ethnic Survival, Nationalism and Forced Migration: The Historical Demography of the Greek Community of Asia Minor at the Close of the Ottoman Era,” [Bulletin of the Center of Asia Minor Studies], v. 5 (Athens, 1984–85), 9–44. Kofos, Evangelos. “Patriarch Joachim III (1878–1894) and the Irredentist Policy of the Greek State,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, v. 4, no. 2 (Oct. 1986), 107–20. Miller, Tracy C. “Anatolia College: Light in a Distant Land,” The Grinnell Magazine (June-July-Aug. 1982), 22–25. Mirak, Robert. “Armenian Emigration to the United States to 1915,” Journal of Armenian Studies, v. 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1975), 5–42. Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. “Educational Policy Review: Greece.” Examiners’ Report (Athens, 1996). Pallis, A. A. [“Ethnic Migration and Expulsions of Hellenism (1912–1924)”], [Bulletin of the Center of Asia Minor Studies], v. 1 (1977), 75–88. Putney, Clifford and Paul T. Berlin, eds., The Role of the American Board in the World, Bicentennial Reflections on the Organization’s Missionary Work, 1810–2010. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012. Riggs, Ernest. “The American Board and the Turks,” The Moslem World, 14, no. 1 (Jan. 1924), 1–4. Salt, Jeremy. “A Precarious Symbiosis: Ottoman Christians and Foreign Missionaries in the Nineteenth Century,” International Journal of Turkish Studies, v. 3, no. 2 (Winter 1985–86), 53–67.



Selected Bibliography

483

Sifakis, Gregory M. “The Impasse of Greek Higher Education,” in Speros Vryonis, Jr., ed., Greece on the Road to Democracy: From the Junta to PASOK 1974–1986. New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas (1991), 285–304. Stone, Frank Andrews. “The American Middle West in the Ottoman Middle East: Anatolia College, Turkey, 1886–1921,” Duquesne University History Forum (Oct. 27–29, 1980). ———. “Anatolia College and Sivas Teachers’ College: Armenian Education in American Schools,” in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., Armenian Sebastia/Sivas and Lesser Armenia. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers (2004), 207–36. Tracy, Charles C. “The Gospel and the College, or, the Power of Educational Evangelism, as Illustrated in Anatolia.” Boston: Press of Samuel Usher, 1898. Trask, Roger R. “‘Unnamed Christianity’ in Turkey during the Ataturk Era,” Part II, The Muslim World, v. 55, no. 2 (Apr. 1965), 101–11. Tuzcu, Ali. [“Armenian Uprisings in Merzifon”], [Bulletin of the Turkish Historical Society], 57 (Dec. 1973), 795–827. Wasser, Henry. “A Survey of Recent Trends in Greek Higher Education,” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, v. 6, no. 1 (Spring 1979), 85–95. White, George E. “The Turkish Awakening,” The Congregationalist and Christian World (Dec. 26, 1908). ———. “The Alevi Turks of Asia Minor,” The Contemporary Review, 104 (July–Dec. 1913), 690–98. ———. “Hope for the Greeks, the Need for Democracy in Hellas and Asia Minor,” The Congregationalist (July 12, 1917). ———. “Agriculture and Industries in Turkey,” in William Hall, ed., Reconstruction in Turkey, New York (1918), 155–94. Wright, Frederick B. “Anatolia Archeological Club of Marsovan, Asia Minor,” Records of the Past, Records of the Past Exploration Society, Washington DC, v. VIII, Part II (Mar.–Apr. 1909), 251–52. Xenides, Ioannes, P. “The Story of Xenides,” The Christian World: A Religious Weekly Review (c. 1916).

} Index

AACG (Association of American Colleges of Greece), 393–94 ABCFM. See American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Abdul Hamid II, Sultan, 71, 83, 102, 120–21, 137 Abel, James W., 221–22 ACHS. See American College of Higher Studies ACT. See American College of Thessaloniki Adam, Vasilis, 354 Adossides, Anastasios, 176 Adventuring with Anatolia College (White), 232 Advisory Committee, Greek, 289–92, 309, 351 Aegean Basketball Tournament, 373 Aegean coastal region, Turkey, 2, 11, 30–31, 68, 162, 171 Aegean Islands, 11, 181, 270, 318 Aegean Sea, 179–81, 366 Agapis, Anastasios, 332, 337 Aghnides, Athansios (Thanassis), 126, 190, 247, 273, 370, 433n68, 434n70, 445n23 Aghnides, Elie, 370 Aghnides, Nicholas P., 126, 370 Agnew, Spiro, 330 Ahmed Shukri Bey, 175 Ahrweiler, Helen Glykatzi, 366

Aintab, Turkey, 24, 30, 32, 37, 39, 42, 73, 95, 232 Ak Dagh (White Mountain), 1, 67, 201, 341 Albania/Albanians, xviii, 12, 14, 181, 188, 245, 247–50, 394 Alevis, 14 Alevizos, Sotiris, 378 Alexaki, Fotini, 318–19 Alexander the Great, 11, 179 Alexiades, Byron, 331, 336, 339, 367 Alexiadis, Theodore, 375 Alexiadou, Ioanna Sarakaki, 375 Alexiou, Thomas, 346 Alexopoulos, Ioachim, 214, 448n21 Alkalai-Molho, Lily, 453n19 Allatini (Sophouli) site/Girls School, 228, 244, 248, 260, 266, 271, 276, 287, 304, 406 Allen, Herbert, 104 Allen, Peter, 388 Allies/Allied Powers, xviii–xix, 155–57, 161–62, 164, 171, 181, 183–84, 440n48, 444n18; World War II, xviii, 257 Almquist, Dorothy, 285 Alotzian, Hakop, 206 Altounian, Jeremiah, 53 Altounian, Melcon, 53, 55, 57, 93 alumni, Anatolia, 123–27, 240–42, 352, 380; achievements of, 125–27, 177–78, 243–44, 263, 380–81, 467n69. See also individual

485

486

Index

names; specific topics, e.g., postgraduate study Alumni Association, Anatolia, 132, 240–41, 304–5, 342, 351–52, 373, 378, 380, 393, 466n56; language school founded by, 266; and village welfare projects, 286–87 Alumni (later Carl C. Compton) Hall, 132–33, 230, 235–36, 240–41, 244, 248–49, 259, 262, 301–2, 325, 466n45 Amarantides, Lazaros, 236, 249, 252, 259, 456n36 Amarantidou, Armonia, 236 Amarantidou, Despina Triantafilidou, 278 Amasia, Turkey, 33–34, 61–62, 120, 124, 145, 163, 366, 417n64, 427n75; trials/ hangings in 1921, xvi, 165–68, 177, 220, 242 American Bible societies, 19, 186 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), xv, 417nn66–68, 420n21, 421n34, 424nn57– 58, 438n21, 440n47, 450n60, 456n41; Anatolia Board of Trustees, establishing, 85–86; Anatolia Board of Trustees made independent from, 223, 226–27; and Anatolia College, founding of, 2, 36–48; and Anatolia College in Marsovan, 234; and Anatolia’s relocation to Greece, 176, 184, 188, 195–96, 228–29; in Asia Minor, 3, 7, 25–26, 415n39; founding of, 3–8, 405; funding for, 26–27; goals and priorities of, 6–7, 18, 25, 27–28, 30, 37–40, 43, 46, 72–73, 102–6, 121, 130, 234; in Greece, 184–88, 195–96, 223–29, 232– 34, 237, 272–73, 444n16; in the Ottoman Empire, 5, 7, 16–30, 49, 127, 405; Riggs (Ernest) as Foreign Secretary, 174, 233; strategy, evolving, 22, 103–6, 192; in Turkey, 1–53, 56, 60, 64–66, 71–74, 132, 143, 152, 155, 174–76, 185, 195, 199. See also Marsovan Mission Station; missionaries; Prudential Committee; Western Turkey Mission American College of Higher Studies (ACHS), 389, 397, 406 American College of Sofia, 306, 317, 369 American College of Thessaloniki (ACT), 389, 391–401, 403–4, 406–7 American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, 155

American Educational (Fulbright) Foundation. See Fulbright Foundation/ Fulbright teachers American Farm School, xix, xxi, 175, 183, 187, 216, 219, 243, 249, 251, 259, 268, 297, 310–11, 322, 368, 393, 447n17, 464n30 American Friends of Greece, 264, 271–72 American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA), 227, 317 American Peace Commission, 155 American Protestant missionary movement/societies, xv, 2–8 American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA), 372–75, 387–88, 391, 401, 467n58 American Women’s Board of Missions, 135 Anagnos (Michael) Schools, 369 Anagnostaki, Vivian, 311 “Analypsi,” 200 Ananiades, Simeon A., 168 Anastasiades, Anastasios, 442n60 Anastasiades, Ioannis, 99 Anastasiadis, George, 56, 239–40 Anatolia, complex of institutions comprising, 130, 223. See also Anatolia College, divisions of Anatolia Alumnus, 352 Anatolia College, xvi, xxi, 231, 405–7; accreditation, xxi, 385, 389–90, 395–96, 398–400, 403, 407; achievements of, 134– 35, 239–42, 314, 363, 365–67; aim of, 107, 154, 233, 240; authorization to found, 2, 36–48; bylaws of, 196, 233–34, 237, 331, 390, 399, 426n72, 446n34; campus culture, 111, 115–16, 215–17, 226, 243, 377–81; as coeducational, xix, 313, 354–55, 406; constitution of, 42, 73–75, 86, 305, 423n47, 423n50; development of, 236, 241, 305–6, 308, 355, 368–69, 394–97; ethos of, 215, 366–67; as evangelical college (initially), 59–61; as foreign school in Greece, 191, 321; founders of, 3, 51–53, 67, 232; founding of, xv, 2–3, 36–50, 54, 67, 74, 124, 193, 213; goals/ objectives of, 107, 138, 213, 340, 349, 377; in Greece, xvii, 176–404, 406–7; Greece, relocation to, 176–99, 230–31, 242; as Greek-American institution, 231; and Greek legal recognition, 392–94; Greek permit to operate, 190–91, 406; Greek youth, conditions essential for

Index 487 serving, 375–77; in Harilaou (temporary campus in Greece), 176, 185, 190, 200–201, 204–5, 208–11, 215, 217–18, 224, 226–29, 231, 235–36, 240, 251, 264, 406; humanitarian values of, 107, 288, 304, 324, 367, 380, 467n69; hymn of, 409–10; incorporated in Massachusetts, 86, 196–97, 369, 404–5; and junior college, description of, 211–12, 325, 385; in Marsovan, Turkey, xvii, 49–178, 241–42, 405–6; Marsovan property, resolving after move to Greece, 228–29; mission of, evolving, xxi, 60, 107, 124, 183, 195, 219, 231, 233, 313–16, 327, 334, 357, 360, 380; models for, 3, 111, 130, 214, 383; motto of, xvi, 2, 67, 83, 201; name of, 41, 191, 196, 417n63; nonprofit status of, 368–69, 461n43; principles of, 214, 231; religious dimension of, 197–98, 213–15, 313; reputation of, xviii–xix, 100, 122, 258, 264, 354, 363; resident community of (in Greece), 357–59; school spirit, 215–17; as secondary-level institution in Turkey, 112, 114, 210, 267; as secondary school in Greece, 283, 303, 312, 331, 374, 383, 387, 391, 397–98; spirit of service, 214–15, 226, 265–67, 275–76, 286–89, 382; in Thessaloniki, Greece, xvii–xxii, 176– 404, 406–7; timeline of, 405–7; two main approaches of, 264–65; and universitylevel instruction, 114, 383–402; vice president, office of, 314–15, 349; World War II and, xviii–xix, 247–68, 406. See also American College of Thessaloniki (ACT); specific topics, e.g., alumni; financial aid Anatolia College, campus of: in Marsovan, Turkey, 57–58, 114, 129–34, 184, 208; in Thessaloniki, Greece, xviii–xix, 199–201, 204–5, 218, 226–32, 300–302, 372–75, 390–92, 406. See also Pylea campus (Thessaloniki); specific buildings Anatolia College, curriculum/academic program of, xxi; in Greece, 207, 210–13, 211–15, 219, 225–26, 244, 264–65, 289–91, 307, 320–21, 327–28, 349, 355, 380; and Greek state curriculum, 207, 212–14, 217, 220, 223, 265, 267, 289–91, 323, 353, 361, 374, 448n18; in Turkey, 110, 112–14, 118, 210–11, 214. See also specific subjects, e.g., languages; science

Anatolia College, divisions of, 90, 148, 223, 292, 345–47, 354–55; secondary school, 283, 303, 312, 331, 374, 383, 387, 391, 397–98. See also specific divisions, e.g., American College of Thessaloniki; Anatolia Elementary School Anatolia College, extracurricular activities/ dimension, xvi, 206, 217, 264–65, 271, 282, 285, 289–90, 324–27, 332–33, 339, 343, 355, 357, 363, 374, 377, 379–80, 396; key purpose of, 265. See also specific activities, e.g., athletics; theater Anatolia College, faculty and staff, 109–11, 218–22, 458n62; American, 283–86, 303, 324, 334–35; Armenian, 110–11, 144–45, 206; Career Members, 254, 257, 282; Compton on role of teachers, 285–86; continuing education of, 283; in Greece, 195, 205, 219–22, 237–38, 270–71, 273–74, 276, 281–86, 323–24, 326–27, 331–32, 339, 364, 376–77; Greek, xx, 116, 165, 219–20, 237, 258, 269, 282, 284–85, 303, 324, 332, 334, 345, 364; in Harilaou, 218; new personnel formula proposed by Riggs, 237–38; and private lessons, 254, 326, 333, 381–82, 468n72; Retirement Fund for Lay Workers, 237–38; salary, 227, 235, 238, 253, 274, 282, 285, 308, 361, 367, 450n60, 458n62; teachers’ union and, 344–45, 347, 365, 376; tenured, 237–38, 282, 334, 344–45; in Turkey, 55–56, 109– 11, 116. See also Fulbright Foundation; tutors; individual names; specific subjects Anatolia College, financial support/ fundraising for, xviii; for College in Greece, 197, 208–10, 226–32, 237, 271–74, 276, 279–81, 306–10, 312–16, 328, 331, 334, 339, 351, 358, 367–72, 466n56; for College in Turkey, 57–58, 114, 128, 131–34, 153–54, 158, 184. See also under individual Anatolia presidents Anatolia College, formative years in Turkey (1886-1921), xvii, 49–178, 241–42, 405–6; building and funding, 57–58; closing of, xvii, 139, 148, 169–78, 230, 405–6; crisis of 1893, 79–86; educational level, 124–25; events, in four segments, 139; firman legitimizing, 92, 112, 114, 129, 193–94, 405, 428n7; as international Christian college, 89–135; missionary movement and founding of, xv–xvi,

488

Index

1–48, 77; organizational structure, 129– 31. See also specific topics and events, e.g., World War I Anatolia College, institutional governance of, 72–79, 85–86, 130–32, 298, 334, 349– 51; advisory committee, appointment of, 289–92; and Armenians as impetus for founding, 39–45, 55, 72–73; and Greek legal restrictions, 289–92. See also Board of Management; Board of Trustees; Prudential Committee Anatolia College, presidency/presidents of, 275, 306, 310, 328–29, 346, 405–7; Board of Trustees and, 233–34, 315–16, 328–29, 331, 376. See also individual names Anatolia College, student body of: in Greece, xvii, 204–9, 216, 219, 225, 239, 242–43, 258, 264–65, 271, 276, 281, 303–4, 318–19, 330, 340–41, 346, 355, 357, 377; in Turkey, 51, 55, 60–61, 88, 92, 97–102, 109, 111, 114–17, 122–23, 125, 129, 147, 154, 158–59, 165, 174, 176–78 Anatolia College, tuition for: government restrictions on (Greece), 333, 371; in Greece, 184, 223, 225, 227, 244, 271–72, 279, 298, 306, 308, 319, 327, 344, 353–54, 359, 361, 365, 367, 371–72; in Turkey, 50–51, 58, 76, 92, 109, 117, 119, 130–31, 158, 184 Anatolia Elementary School, 323, 333, 403, 407 The Anatolian (yearbook), 217, 222, 265–66 Anatolia Secretarial School. See Secretarial School, Anatolia Anderson, Mabel E., 238 Anderson, Rufus, 17, 24, 26–29, 32, 36 Andover Theological Seminary, 4–6, 32, 36, 52 Ankara, Turkey, 56, 162–64, 167–68, 170–71, 208, 228, 237n12, 441n55 Anna Marie, Queen, 320 Annex, 210, 244 Anthony, Gertrude, 166–68, 205 Antoniades, Byron, 220, 243 Antoniadou, Aristi, 379 Antoniou, Antonis, 341 Antoniou, Panayiotis, 378 apolitirion, 211–13, 381 Apostolic Armenian Church. See Gregorian Church Apostolic Institute of Konia in Turkey, 227, 424n57

Apostolides, Peter, 350, 365 Arakelian, Krikor, 426n73, 427n75 Armenia, independent (Treaty of Sèvres), 164 Armenia, “Lesser,” 33 Armenia, Soviet republic of, 206–7 Armenian College. See Euphrates College Armenian Evangelical Church, 21, 29, 53, 72, 83, 98 Armenian language, 25, 36, 52, 108, 111, 167, 206–7 Armenian National Assembly, 141 Armenian Relief Committee, 89, 152–53, 153, 439n33 Armenian republic, 177, 206–7 Armenians/Armenian communities of North Central Turkey, 12–14, 69–71, 91, 422n43; and Anatolia College, founding of, 1, 39–45, 53; as Anatolia graduates, 125–27; as Anatolia instructors, 110–11, 206; as Anatolia students, 99, 146, 148, 206–7; Days of Tragedy in Armenia: Personal Experiences in Harpoot, 1915–1917 (Henry H. Riggs), 450n57; deportations of, 142, 145–46, 150, 166, 172, 174, 405; divisions within, 85, 414n35; “Lesser Armenia,” 33; massacres of, 86–88, 121, 138, 142–43, 146, 152–53, 159, 172, 174, 405, 436nn10– 11, 437n12; millet of, 13, 21, 23, 102, 141; missionary movement in Turkey and, 1–48; “Mission to the Armenians,” 21, 30; Protestant, 23–24, 32, 34, 53; as refugees, 169, 171, 183, 198, 206–7, 218, 300; rescue of girls, 145–46, 151, 438n22; Roman Catholic, 23, 436n11. See also Anatolia College, institutional governance of; Christian minorities in Turkey; Gregorian Church; Near East Relief; Pontus Evangelistic Association Armistice of Mudros, 155, 157, 405 Aroukian, Samuel, 206 Arozian, H. A., 437n12 Arpajoglou, Ann, 261 Arsakli, xvii, 200, 252. See also Panorama Arslanian, Bedros, 427n75 “articulation agreements,” 386, 389, 404 “A” Schools, 377 ASHA. See American Schools and Hospitals Abroad Asia Minor, 30–31; ABCFM in, 3, 7, 25–26, 415n39; juxtaposition of religious

Index 489 communities in, 14. See also Ottoman Empire; Turkey; specific topics, e.g., Armenians Asjian, Arthur, 447n6 Askitopoulos, Ioannis, 236 Aslanides, Paulos, 255 Association of American Colleges in Greece (AACG), 393–94 Astigian, Yeprem N., 111 Atatürk, Kemal, 162, 164, 171, 174, 177, 187, 232 Atesoglou-Dimitriadou, Athanasia, 283 Athenagoras, Greek Orthodox Patriarch, 214, 273, 289 Athens, Academy of, 366 Athens, Greece, xvii, xx, 20, 100, 126, 176– 79, 183, 186–88, 190–91, 198, 204–5, 214, 241–43, 251–53, 263, 267, 290–92, 298, 304–5, 316, 320, 334–38, 345–48, 360–64, 366, 371, 373, 378, 395, 403, 444n18, 469n9; alumni in, 352, 380; U.S. Embassy in, 243, 271, 290, 364, 393 Athens, Greece, American-sponsored institutions in, 386, 393. See also Pierce College Athens, University of, 56, 124, 177, 219–20 Athens College, 178, 216, 285, 291, 305, 350, 358, 451n74 Atherton, Ray (U.S. minister), 190 athletics, 115, 118, 159, 226, 230, 239, 265, 271, 304, 324, 357, 363, 378, 395; athletic court/building, xxi, 373, 406; Compton and, 216 Attaliades, Vasilis, 283, 285 Austro-Hungary, 180 Azarian, Makrouhi, 119 Babanisian, Vahan S., 126 Baboulouzian, Levon, 206 Baglani, Anastasia Oikonomidou, 283, 355 Baglani-Efstathiou, Venetia, 378 Baglanis, Vaios, 282 Bahn, Eugene, 302–3 Baiter, Peter, 357 Bakalaki, Evdokia Ebeoglou, 281 Bakalakis, George, 282 Balian, Max or Muggerdich S., 426n68 Balkan Junior Volleyball Tournament, 373 Balkan Wars, xvii, 137, 175, 180–81, 204, 222–23, 443n5, 444n16 Baronian, Haigaram, 157, 447n6 “St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre,” 344

Barton, James L., 121, 132, 143, 147, 153, 155, 160, 171, 174–75, 189, 193–94, 196, 198, 227, 434n82, 438n21, 440n48, 444n18, 446n34; Daybreak in Turkey, 127 Bash, Michael, 356 basketball, 216, 297, 305, 338, 372–73, 378–79, 395 Bastea, Eleni, 467n71 Bastis, Christos, 358 Bebek Seminary, 25, 27–28, 32, 37, 43–44, 46, 59, 405; move to Marsovan, 32, 36, 103, 405 Bedrosian, Edward H., 126 Bedrosian, Hagop, 53 Bedrosian-Felician, Anna, 35, 64, 119 Belcher, Harold, 299, 308 Benlian, Badrig H., 240 Benson, Warren, 284 Benstead, Horace, 319 Berlin, Treaty of, 68–70, 87, 141, 422n42 “B” gymnasium, 377 Bible, 6, 15, 17–20, 25, 60, 84, 104, 120–22, 147, 163, 214; missionaries’ translation/ circulation of, 6, 18–20, 30–31, 47, 52, 66–67, 99; the Septuagint, 186; unauthorized translations, 186 Bible House in Constantinople, 2, 30, 52 Bible societies, American and British, 19, 186 Billis, Angelos, 350, 363, 372, 466n56 Bird, Rev. and Mrs. Isaac, 6 Bissell, George S., 376, 399–400, 404 Bissell Library (ACT), 397–401, 404, 407 Bithynian Union, 42–43, 73, 78 Black, Floyd, 306, 308–10 Black Sea, xvi, 5, 8, 11–12, 14, 22, 30–31, 33–34, 40, 60, 62, 97–100, 105, 124, 129, 141, 151, 154, 167, 177, 180, 204, 366 Blatsas, Bill, 390 Bliss, Edwin E., 14, 31–32, 35, 37, 414n33, 414n35, 416n51 Bliss, Flavia, 35 Board of Commissioners. See American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) Board of Managers, Anatolia, 53, 73–76, 78, 85–86, 110, 159, 170, 209, 211, 218, 224, 426n72; abolishment of, 237–39; and Anatolia’s relocation to Greece, 185, 194–95; and appointment of Ernest Riggs as president, 233–34; Compton

490

Index

as acting chairman, 238; Thoumayan as first chairman, 83, 85 Board of Trustees, Anatolia, xvi, xviii, xxii, 126, 155, 170, 214, 229, 238, 240–41, 244–45, 258, 309, 314; ABCFM, independence from, 223, 226–27; alumni members of, 241, 326, 341, 376; and Anatolia’s relocation to Greece, 184–85, 191–92, 196–97; and appointment of Ernest Riggs as president, 233–34; Boston as base of, 307, 316, 328, 330–31, 334, 337, 349–51, 360, 375–76, 384–85, 399; early (membership identical to Prudential Committee), 130–31, 196, 233–34; Greek trustees, appointment of, 350–51, 363, 376; the president and, 233–34, 315–16, 328–29, 331, 368, 376; reorganization in 1958, 298; separate, establishment of, 196–98, 234; “Trustees of Anatolia College,” 85–86, 130–31. See also individual names; specific topics, e.g., Anatolia College, financial support/ fundraising for Bosphorus, 25, 28–29, 289 Boston, Massachusetts, 316, 352, 368–369; as Anatolia’s legal home and trustees’ base, 307, 316, 328, 330–31, 334, 337, 349–51, 360, 369, 375–76, 384–85, 399. See also American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; Massachusetts Botsakis, Konstantinos (Constantine), 283, 322, 328, 332 Bowen, Gilbert, 369 Boys Gymnasium, 345, 377. See also gymnasiums, Greek Boys School, 118, 194, 240, 263, 272–74, 299, 301–3, 328, 355, 406; campus of, 276–77, 300, 373; faculty and staff of, 281–83, 285, 309, 313, 321–22, 332–34, 339, 345–46; student body of, 225, 292; in Turkey, 90. See also under Compton, Carl: as dean Brewer, Josiah, 7, 412n9 Brewster, Carroll, 399 Brewster, J. Riggs, 175, 186, 188–89, 200, 214, 232, 234 Bristol, Mark, 170–71, 175 Britain, 3, 5, 68, 83, 96, 147, 161, 247, 250, 257, 267–68, 295, 422n42; colleges and universities in, 386, 397 British Bible Lands Mission Aid Society, 209

British Bible societies, 19, 186 Bryce, David, 143 Bulgaria/Bulgarians, xviii, 3, 12, 14, 19, 30, 68–71, 77, 137, 141, 154, 180–82, 186–88, 200, 311, 415n39, 444n16, 444n18; American College of Sofia, 306, 317, 369; World War II and, 250, 252–53 Bulgarian Exarchate, 69 Burns, R. Nicholas (U.S. Ambassador to Greece), 394, 400 Business Administration, School of (SBALA), 383, 385–90, 406 Byzantine Empire, 8–9, 11–13, 179–80, 203 Caldwell, Alice B., 119 Callison, Jo Alice, 306 Caloger, Ethel, 315 Caloger, Ion, 315 Calvinism, 4, 46–47, 54, 59 campuses, Anatolia College. See Anatolia College, campus of Canning, Stratford, 23 “Capitulations,” 23, 71, 85, 140, 163, 170, 172 Capodistrias, John (Greek President), 20 CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere), 297 Career Membership, 237, 254, 257, 282, 344 Carleton College, 55–56, 64, 88, 90–91, 96, 111–12, 150–52, 214, 225, 273, 283 Caroline Westervelt House, 236 Carrington, Phoebe W. J., 90 Carrington, Thomas Spees, 94–95 Catholicism. See Roman Catholic Church Caucasus region, 5, 12, 100, 154, 169, 177 CCSC (Congregational Christian Service Committee), 287–89 Centennial, celebration of, 365–67, 388, 406 Central Evangelical Union, 36 Central Intelligence Agency, U. S. government (CIA), 297, 360, 465n37 Central Powers, 181 Central Turkey College, 37, 42, 73–74, 132 Challenger, Anna, 390, 396 Chapman, John F., 221, 298–99, 302, 306–7, 312, 315–17, 322, 328–29, 368 Charanis, Alexandra “Sandy,” 356, 378 Chekaloff, Gregory, 110, 167–68 Chepou, Ernest, 370 Chepou Hall, 374 Chicago, Illinois, 369 Childs, W. J., 129

Index 491 Chinegoezian, Gulumia, 120 Chorale, Anatolia, 325, 378 Christianity, 4–5, 9, 12, 16, 35, 45, 47, 59, 81, 180, 189 Christian minorities in Turkey, xvi–xvii, 8–16, 19, 30, 34, 47, 67–71, 71, 105, 127, 162, 170–71, 173, 188 Christoforidou, Sotiria, 377 Christopoulos, General, 248 “Christ or Culture,” 102 Chrysakis, Margaret, 119 Chryssis, Christos, 283 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency, U. S. government), 297, 360, 465n37 Circassians, 14, 62, 100, 121 “Civilization or Christianization,” 29, 37 civil war, 171. See also Greek civil war; United States Civil War Clark, C. E., 199 Clark, Nathaniel G., 36 Clark, William, 28 Clarke, William P., 187 Clarke Institute for the Deaf, Northampton, Massachusetts, 96 Cleveland, Grover, 81–82, 425n64 Cleveland H. Dodge Foundation, 153 Clinton, William, 330 Clogg, Richard, 388 Clymer, John “Jack,” ix–x, 404 coeducation, xix, 313, 354–55, 406 Cold War, 267, 295, 376 Cole, Lillian (Sewny), 218–19, 236 Commencement, Anatolia College, 1–2, 115, 126, 135, 138, 211, 227, 300, 314, 321, 335, 382, 396, 433n61 Commerce and Amity, Treaty of, 71 Committee of Union and Progress (Turkey), 108. See also “Young Turks” Common Market (European Economic Community), 296, 359 “common schools,” 25 Compton, Carl C., 127, 215, 277, 285, 287– 88, 366, 404, 450n59; as Anatolia’s fifth president, xix–xx, 274–76, 278–81, 283, 285, 290, 303, 307–8, 313, 406, 450n59; as Board of Managers acting chairman, 238; character and personality of, 215– 17, 275, 279; as dean, 165–68, 170, 175, 192, 198, 205, 208–10, 214–20, 226, 228, 238–42, 244, 257–58, 261–64, 269, 272–76, 291, 307; retirement and continued service/involvement of, xx, 292–93,

297–98, 300, 314, 329, 404; as tutor, 115, 144, 146, 159 Compton, Ruth McGavren, 159, 165–68, 192, 198, 205, 208–10, 214–15, 218–19, 228, 242, 244, 278, 292–93, 300 Compton, William, 280, 285 Compton Hall, 325, 358, 387–88, 391, 404 computer science/studies, xxi, 374, 377, 383, 385–86, 390–92, 395, 399 co-nationals, 206 Congregational Christian Service Committee (CCSC), 287–89 Congregational Church/ Congregationalism, 3–4, 16–17, 38, 47, 52–53, 64–65, 67, 96–97, 130, 173, 186, 225, 227, 236, 238, 256, 266, 456n44; fundamental principle of, 42 Constantine, George, 99 Constantine, King, xx, 181, 190, 320–21 Constantinides, C. V., 111 Constantinides, Stavros, 341, 350, 370, 375 Constantinides School, 216 Constantinople, 7, 30, 36, 143, 289; city of, 8, 15, 31, 141, 180; U.S. Embassy in, 120, 129, 140, 146, 148–49, 170, 199; U.S. Legation in, 57, 71, 80–81, 83, 85, 92, 432n55. See also specific entities, e.g., Bebek Seminary; Bible House; Girls School; Western Turkey Mission Cook, Charles, 390, 398 Cooper, William C., 187 “Cooperation in Anatolia College, Facts Concerning the Past and Present” (Tracy), 76–77 Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), 297 Corning, Susan, 167–68 Coules, Rodney, 342, 356 Couloumbi, Zoi Papadopoulou, 288–89 Couloumbis, Theodore, 350 Couvaras, Costas, 255 Couzinos (Kouzoujakoglou), Efthymios N., 169, 442n60 Cowling, Donald J., 273 cram schools, 326, 333, 347, 381–82, 468n72 Crane, Charles R., 440n45 Crane, Helen Pappas, 369 Creighton, Roy, 455n24 Crete, 137, 180–81, 252, 318 Crimean War, 28 Crusaders, Christian, 9, 180 Culolias, Nicholas, 309

492

Index

curriculum, Anatolia College. See Anatolia College, curriculum of Currie, Philip, 89 Cyprus, xx–xxi, 20, 236, 238, 336–41; conflict between Greece and Turkey over, 321, 336–40, 359–60; Cypriot scholars, 340–41; Model UN roleplaying, 347–48; occupied by Britain, 68; Turkish invasion of, 337, 339–40 Daghlian, Arshag D., 111, 119, 409–10, 437n12 Damala, Vasiliki, 358 Daybreak in Turkey (Barton), 127 Days of Tragedy in Armenia: Personal Experiences in Harpoot, 1915–1917 (Henry H. Riggs), 450n57 Deliyannides, Savvas, 219 Demertzoglou, Pindaros, 395 Demetracopoulos, C. S., 111 Demetracopoulos, Stratos, 126 Demetracopoulos (Demos), Raphael S., 126–27, 241 Demos, Anna, 126 Demos, Constantine S., 127 Demos, Raphael S., 126–27, 241 Demos (Nicholas) Foundation, 369 Demosthenis Raptelis Foundation, 369 depression, economic, 230, 237 Depression, Great, xviii, 199, 225, 227–28, 234, 238, 450n60 Deree College, 386, 393, 470n30 “deviations,” 290–91, 323, 361 Dewey, John, 445n25 Dildilian, Ara, 206 Dimitracopoulou-Platiridou, Olga. See Platiridou, Olga Dimitriadis (also Doubakis), Constantine, 432n50 Dimitriadou, Athanasia Atesoglou, 283 Dingilian, Hovhannes, 123–24 Dinopoulos, Ilias, 358 Dodd, E. M., 32, 34–35, 419n7 Dodge, Cleveland H., 153, 369 Domestic Science, 118–19, 285 “Donmes,” 182 Dorikian, Lusaper, 95, 119, 146 Doubakis, Constantine, 432n50 Drakos, William, 369, 391 Drama Club, 378 Draper, Charlotte, 324, 357

Draper, George, 324, 354, 357, 464n30 Duane, Allan, 322 Dukakis, Kitty, 348 Dukakis, Michael (Governor of Massachusetts), 348, 366; Michael S. Dukakis Chair in Public Policy and Service, 400 Dwight, Henry O., 7, 21, 52, 417n66, 425n64 EAM/ELAS (National Liberation Movement/Army), 255–56 earthquake near Thessaloniki/earthquake victims, 348, 373, 406 Eastern Christian churches, 16–18, 45, 47–48, 103 Eastern Europe, 8, 10, 373 Ebeoglou, Prodromos, 220, 241, 250, 254, 261, 279–80, 308, 372 Ebeoglou-Bakalaki, Evdokia, 281 Eddy, David Brewer, 422n44 EDES (anticommunist force), 255 Edessa, Greece, 175, 200 Educational Commission, 108, 114 Education Ministry, Greek. See Greek Ministry of Education EEC (later EC, or European Community), 330, 353 Efstathiou, Venetia Baglani, 378 Efstratiades, Dimitris, 283 Egypt, 3, 68, 100, 177–78, 206, 218, 250, 415n39 Electri, Chrysoula Papidou, 288 Eleftheriades, Olga Mavrophidou, 270, 374 Eleftheriades, Socrates, 259, 270, 374 Eleftheriades Library, 374, 391–92, 406 elementary schools: Anatolia Elementary School, 323, 333, 403, 407; in Greece, 222–24, 258, 262, 270, 277, 281, 358, 403; Piney Woods School, 277–78, 310; in Turkey, 7, 20, 27, 39, 49, 90, 107, 113, 118, 124, 148, 151, 199, 427n3, 468n73 Elliott, Grace M., 223 Elmer, Henrietta, 146 Elmer, Theodore, 106, 108, 143, 145–46, 169 Emerson, Mabel E., 224 English language (instruction), 211, 213, 220, 222, 225, 257, 280, 284, 289, 291, 303, 306, 310, 324–25, 327, 333, 335, 338, 341, 353, 362, 378–79, 384, 387, 395; center in downtown Thessaloniki, 362 ; “deviations,” 290–91, 323, 361; English-

Index 493 language debate club/teams, 206, 363, 378; “English-speaking Rule,” 217; enhancing, 355–57; as lingua franca of the College, 109–10; in Turkey, 27–28, 39, 56, 109–10, 112; World War II and, 262 Engonopoulou-Karalia, Fofo (Sofia), 200, 277, 466n56 Enlightenment, 47, 69, 109 Entente governments, 156, 161, 181 EON (National Youth Organization), 242–43 Epirus, 100, 181, 256 Eppinga, Alice, 324, 356 Erzerum, Turkey, 87, 148, 414n33 ESSO Corporation, 297 Etyemezian, Hovig, 206 Eumurian, Sisag K., 127 Euphrates College, 42, 73–74, 87, 91, 124, 171, 227, 232 European Economic Community (Common Market), 296, 359 European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan), 295 European Turkey Mission, 186 European Union (EU), xx, 376, 379–80, 384, 397, 400, 404 European Youth Chorale, 378 European Youth Parliament (EYP), 379 evangelical churches. See Armenian Evangelical Church; Greek Evangelical Church evangelism, 44, 46, 97, 174, 188; Ernest Riggs on, 233; “nationalism vs.,” 76–78 Evstathiades, Charalambos I., 168, 242 Evstathiades, Ioannis, 242 Evstratiades, Dimitris, 283 extracurricular activities. See Anatolia College, extracurricular activities/ dimension Faculty Advisory Committee, 396 faculty and staff, Anatolia. See Anatolia College, faculty and staff; individual names Faculty Development Committee, 396 Falari, Margarita, 282, 331, 339, 346–47, 355 Fay, Samuel (Peter), 324, 356 Felician, Anna, 35, 64, 119 Filaretos, Theodore, 382 Filiatra village, Peloponnesus, Greece, 317

finances, Anatolia College. See Anatolia College, financial support/fundraising for financial aid/scholarships, xix, xxi, 463n83, 464n25; for American (and British) colleges/universities, 325, 353–54, 386, 467n71; to attend Anatolia (Greece), 206, 225, 236, 240–41, 255, 264, 266, 269, 271–72, 280, 283, 288–89, 299, 304, 307–8, 317–20, 332, 352–54, 357–59, 361, 367, 369–71, 379–81, 386–88, 395; to attend Anatolia (Turkey), 51, 53–54, 56, 124, 126, 132, 135, 271; for Cypriot scholars, 340–41; national scholars, 317–19, 325, 327, 357–59, 380. See also Self-Help firman, 92, 112, 129, 193–94 Fisk, Pliny, 5, 7 Florentin, Marika (“Meddy”), 255 Folsom, John, 302–3 Folsom, Robert, 311 Folts, DeFred G., 316 Forbes, Malcolm, 398 foreign schools. See under Greece; Turkey forensics, 356–57, 361, 363, 378–79 France, 10, 68, 83, 109, 180, 184, 204, 206, 344, 379, 413n22 Frangistas, Charalambos, 290 Frangos, Christos, 282 Frederica, Queen, 300 “Free Studies” option. See “Workshops of Free Studies” French language, 109–13, 212–13, 223, 237, 269, 291, 297 French Lyceum, 216, 223 French schools, 141, 187, 222, 360, 469n9 Friends of Anatolia Association, 280, 369, 372, 391 Fritcher, Eliza, 35, 62, 64, 90, 416n51 Fritcher Hall, 92, 118, 129 frontistiria (cram schools), 326–27, 347, 454n14 Fulbright Foundation/Fulbright teachers, 280, 284–85, 287, 289, 305–6, 324, 334, 340, 352, 388 fundraising. See Anatolia College, financial support/fundraising for Gage, Frances C., 56, 64, 90, 143, 145–46, 149, 151–53, 436n10; rescuing Anatolia girls, 145–56, 150–51, 405, 438n22 gaiour (infidel) stigma, 9–10, 16, 142

494

Index

Galilaias, Christos, 467n66 Gallopoulos, Nicholas, 283 Gannaway, Mr. and Mrs. Charles, 156–57 Gateley, John, 356, 377 General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts, 4 Gennadios, Bishop, 189–90, 201, 214, 232, 235 George II, King, 240, 242–43, 252, 292 Georgiades, George, 308 Georgiadou, Panayiota (Toula), 377, 404 Georgopapadakos, Anastasios, 282, 309, 315, 322–24, 464n13 Georgopoulou, Eleni, 340 German language, 297 Germanos, Greek Orthodox Patriarch, 98 Germany, 81, 100, 115, 298, 302, 359, 379, 449n35; Anatolia as headquarters of German army command, xviii, 251–53, 258–60, 262, 277, 325, 373, 406, 453n13; education/educational philosophy, 212, 223, 264, 360; Greece and, 181, 242, 250–60, 406; Turkey and, 137, 140, 405, 437n12 Getchell, Dana K., 96, 100, 149, 151, 156, 159, 163, 169, 175, 185, 197, 205, 218, 232–33, 239, 440n43; as Preparatory Division principal, 112 Getchell, Susan (Riggs), 91, 112, 147, 169, 175, 185, 219, 232, 239 Giesecke, Hans, Anatolia’s eleventh president, 404, 407 Girls School, in Greece, 192–93, 205, 228, 236, 239–41, 243–45, 248–49, 255, 281–88, 285, 291–92, 299–301, 305, 307–9, 313–15, 328, 369, 374, 406, 455n24; Allatini site, 228, 244, 248, 260, 266, 271, 276, 287, 304, 406; Anatolia acquiring, 222–26; “A” Schools, 377; faculty and staff, 192, 199, 224, 263, 281–86, 331–32, 339, 346; “finishing school” description, 225; Pylea campus, relocation to, 244–45, 260–63, 266, 271–72, 276–78; student body of, 222, 225, 292; supervision/ oversight of, 225. See also Ingle, Mary Girls School, in Turkey, xvi, xix, 88, 90–93, 95–96, 98, 100, 125, 128–30, 192; academic program of, 64, 118–20; alumni of, 118, 437n13; Armenian students rescued, 145–46; building

burned, xix, 80, 86, 92, 118, 129, 405; as complementary to Seminary and Anatolia College, 34–35, 53, 64, 93, 135, 223; in Constantinople (Haskoy), xvi, 27, 29, 32, 35, 421n36, 438n21; expansion of, 106–7; faculty and staff of, 64, 90–91, 117, 119–20, 150–51, 158, 192, 224; financial aid, 119; goals of, 117; management of, 66, 91; moved to Marsovan, xvi, 1–2, 32–36, 38–39, 49–50, 53, 56–57, 60–66, 405, 416n51; Muslims enrolled in, 122; rebuilding after fire (Fritcher Hall), 83, 92, 118, 129; supervision/oversight of, 86, 130, 223; World War I and, 140–41, 143, 145, 147–48, 150–51, 158, 169, 174, 178 Glykatzi-Ahrweiler, Helen, 366 Godhi, Katerina Iatridou, 282–83 Godhi, Ninetta, 332 Gogakis, Constantinos, 340–41 Goldbury, James E., 159 Gold Cross of King George, 292 Gonatas, Nicholas, 263 Goodell, Abigail, 6 Goodell, William, 5–7, 19, 24, 93 Gotzamanis, Georgios, 263 Gounis, Costas, 340 graduate school. See postgraduate study Grandin, John L., 227 Grant, Ulysses S., 420n17 Graves, Harold, 222 Great Britain, 3, 5, 96, 247, 295, 356, 385–86, 397, 422n42. See Britain Great Depression. See Depression, Great Great War. See World War I Greco-Turkish War, 182. See also Lausanne Treaty Greece, xvii–xxi, 176–404; Americansponsored institutions in, 393–94; Anatolia College in, xvii, 176–404, 406– 7; anti-American sentiment in, xx, 330, 332, 334, 344, 350; ban on proselytism in, xviii; foreign schools in, 187, 191, 195, 211, 223, 237, 244, 258, 263, 279, 289–90, 321, 323, 334, 345–49, 360–62, 365, 378, 384, 447n16, 457n58, 469n9; the Greek people, 11–12, 247–48, 276, 338–39; and irredentism, 12, 68, 441n55; Junta in, 320–30, 332, 335–40, 343–50, 359, 364–65, 375, 406; private education in, ix, 191, 281, 344, 347, 349, 361, 362, 364–65, 376,

Index 495 393; private vs. public schools, 211, 281, 365; and Protestantism, 185–91; refugees to/in, 181–86, 189–91, 198, 200–201, 203– 7, 220, 239, 242, 270, 286–87, 289, 295, 296, 300, 340, 370; system of governance, 362; United States and, xx, 295–98, 330, 340, 359–62, 376, 403, 445n24. See also specific locations; specific topics and events, e.g., Anatolia College, curriculum of; Lausanne Treaty; World War II Greek Advisory Committee, 289–92, 309, 351 Greek Americans, 227, 318, 369 Greek Christian minority in Asia Minor. See Christian minorities in Turkey Greek Church, 20, 43, 47, 186 Greek civil war, xix, 260–61, 264, 266–71, 274–75, 280, 356–57, 406, 455n16; aftermath of, 282, 284, 286–88, 296, 310, 320, 375 Greek education at Marsovan, 99, 165 Greek Evangelical Church/Alliance, 43, 98–99, 99, 186, 414n35 Greek language, 20, 111, 159, 165, 217, 219, 222, 282, 303, 321–22, 324, 338, 346, 403, 457n58; instruction, 212; popular (demotic) version, 321, 345 Greek millet, 12, 102 Greek Ministry of Education, 190–91, 211–12, 219, 225, 240, 242–44, 262, 278, 290–91, 304, 310, 320–23, 333, 340, 348– 49, 354, 357, 361–63, 365, 372, 376, 387, 393, 400, 447n16, 451n77, 454n14. See also Inspector of Foreign Schools Greek minority in Turkey. See under Turkey: Christian minorities in Greek Orthodox Church, xviii, 348–49, 375; in Greece, 185–87, 189–90, 201, 203, 214, 231–32, 235, 286, 305, 320; schools, 140; in Turkey, 7, 9, 11, 17, 20, 49, 68–69, 98–99, 103, 140, 171. See also Orthodox religion Greek refugees, xvii, 171, 206 Greek school, Anatolia’s. See Koraïs School Greek schools, 271, 291, 310, 360–61, 374, 458n62; in Asia Minor, 98, 102; Greek educational model, 222–23 Greek students at Anatolia in Turkey, 97–102, 140 Greek War of Independence, 6–7, 10, 12 Greek War Relief Association, 249, 257, 272

Gregorian (Apostolic Armenian) Church, 9, 13, 17, 21–22, 25, 32–34, 38, 42, 49, 60, 69, 99, 103, 123, 141, 214, 418n76 Gregory V, Greek Orthodox Patriarch, 12 Gregory VI, Greek Orthodox Patriarch, 20 Greka, Anna, 468n71 Gridley, Elnathan, 7 Grinnell College, 56, 67, 96, 111, 115, 144, 214–15, 218, 225, 299, 354, 369, 383; teaching interns from, 357 Grinnell Field, 151 Gulbenkian, Dikeran G., 427n75 Gulian, Armine, 120 Gulian, K. H., 111, 119 Gullion, Edmund, 245, 363 Gureghian, Pampish Prampion, 35, 119, 135 Gureghian, Sarkis, 144 Gyftopoulos, Elias, 337 gymnasia, 291, 355 gymnasiarchis, 291, 331 gymnasiums, Greek (high school), 211, 214, 225–26, 320, 345–46, 355, 374, 377, 451n77 Hadjikyriakos, Professor, 217 Hadjimatheou, Matheos, 220 Hadjiparaskeva, Tanoula Nasla, 289 Hadjisavas, Achileas, 127 Hadji-Savvas, Miltiades, 95 Hagopian, V. Hovannes, 56, 111, 144, 163, 441n53 Hall (Charles M.) Fund, 197, 227–29, 272 Hamlin, Cyrus, 16, 25, 27–28, 44, 46–47, 59, 93, 103, 405, 420n21 Harbinger High School, 41, 45, 50, 54–55, 134, 405, 417n64 Harbord, James G., 160 Harding, Warren G., 172 Hardouvelis, Gikas A., 325–26 Harilaou, Thessaloniki (temporary Anatolia campus). See under Anatolia College: in Harilaou Haritidis, Sotiris, 386 Haroutian (teacher), 31 Harput, Turkey, 30, 32, 39, 42, 73, 91, 171, 198, 232, 416n51, 417n66, 421n32 Haskoy, Constantinople, 29, 32, 35 Hatzikyriakos, Kyriakos, 220 Hatzimatheou, religion teacher, 281 Hatzitakis, Vasilis, 391 Hatzivalasis, George, 243

496

Index

Hatzizani-Papadopoulou, Venetia, 282 Hawkes, Jessie Newgeon, 218, 238 Hawkes, William E., 218, 238 Hayden, Reta, 312, 320, 328 Hayden, Robert I., Anatolia’s seventh president, 312–23, 327–33, 335, 338, 368 Haynes, Julian, 376, 390 Haystack Prayer Meeting, 3 Hebrard, Ernest, 239 Heitmann villa, 251–52 Hellenic heritage, 289 Hellenization, 181, 207, 222 Hemingway, Ernest, 183 Heraklion, Crete, 318 Herrick, George, 39–41, 44, 52, 56, 76, 135, 138, 417n65, 419n9, 427n75; as second Anatolia president, 66–67, 78–84, 132, 405, 424n55, 425n64, 426n68; and Western Turkey Mission, 30, 121 higher education, 382–402 high school: Anatolia equivalent to Greek private, 211, 224, 240, 244, 361, 384, 406; Girls School as, 225–26; public vs. private, 211, 281, 365. See also gymnasium, Greek; Harbinger High School; Pinewood Schools Hine, Marion C., 448n35 Hionidis, Nicholas, 334 Hitler, Adolf, xviii, 126, 254 Hodge, Carol, 245 Hoesley, Elsie. See White, Elsie Hoesley Holdeman, Ivan, 284 the Home (residence for young boys), 65, 90–91, 111–12, 132, 210; in Greece, 218 Hoover, Alden, 110 Hoover, Mrs. A. R., 119 Hopkins, H. L., 448n35 Hopkins, Mark, 55 Hortiatis, Mt., 200, 229–30 Hortiatis village, Greece, 235, 256, 266, 286, 297 Horton, George, 187, 445n25 Hosford, Donald M., 159, 165–66, 170 hospitals, 336; at Anatolia, in Marsovan, 92–96, 132–33, 156–57; military, during World War II, 248–49, 406; military, Marsovan campus requisitioned for, 148, 150, 177 Hourmouziades, Nikolaos (Nicholas), 282, 300 House, Charles L., 188

House, John Henry, 187–88 Hovagimian, Mihran G., 169 Hughes, Charles Evans, 171 humanistic tradition, 214–15, 231 humanitarianism/humanitarian service, 26, 28, 39, 46–47, 85, 96, 107, 150, 197, 304, 380, 467n69; Anatolia’s mission of, 367, 380; Anatolia’s spirit of service, 214–15, 226, 265–67, 275–76, 286–89, 382; student participation in, 265, 324 humanities, 28, 386, 395 Hunchakian Revolutionary Party, 69, 83, 426n68 Huntington, George H., 234 Hurmuziades, Callisthenes, 144 hymn of Anatolia College, 409–10 Iakovides, Socrates, 241, 257, 277 Iakovos, Archbishop, 348–49 Iatrides, John O., xxii Iatrides, Manos, 251, 287 Iatrides, Orestes, 220, 236, 250–51, 254, 258–69, 261, 264, 266–67, 279, 281 Iatrides, Mrs. (Orestes), 261 Iatridou, Sabine, 467n71 Iatridou-Godhi, Katerina, 282–83 idadi, 112–13 Iliadis, Haris, 467n66 Industrial Revolution, 15 infidel stigma, 9–10, 16, 142 Ingle, Mary, 245, 261–63, 272, 274, 276, 278, 285, 288, 291, 300, 307–9, 313–14, 452n2, 453n19 Ingle Hall, 355, 358, 372, 375, 403, 406 Ingram, David B., 299, 466n54 Inspector of Foreign Schools (Greece), 244, 321, 323, 334, 345–46, 348 institutional governance. See Anatolia College, institutional governance of International Baccalaureate (IB), 381–82 International College, Smyrna, 132, 220–21, 227, 446n34, 449n49 International High School. See Pinewood Schools-Thessaloniki International High School international schools, 335 Ioakimides, A., 111 Ioannides, Georgios, 283 Ioannou, Andromache, 120 Ioannou, Katerina, 386 Iowa College. See Grinnell College

Index 497 Iowa Quadrangle, 209–10 Ireland, Philip and Marjory, 370 Iron Curtain, 297 irredentism, Greek, 12, 68, 441n55 Islam, 5–6, 8–9, 11, 103, 122, 139, 144, 146, 157, 161, 185, 422n44; “Donmes,” 182; ethnic and linguistic groups, 14; pressures to convert to, 11, 437n12. See also Muslims Istanbul, Turkey. See Constantinople Italian schools, 258, 264 Italy, xviii–xix, 137, 180, 182, 187, 337; invasion of Greece by, xviii, 213, 245, 247–48, 250–52, 255, 406 Ivy League universities, 354 Izmir. See Smyrna, Turkey Jackson, Richard L., Anatolia’s tenth president, 400, 403, 407 Jahid, Jemil, 165 James, Arthur Curtis, 133 Jedidian, H. K., 111 Jemil Jahid, 165 Jenanyan, Harutune, 424n57 Jenazian, H. N., 437n12 Jesuits, 40, 109, 413n22 Jewett, Milo, 80, 424n58 Jews/Judaism, 5–6, 9, 20; in Constantinople, 20; the “Donmes,” 182; Jewish schools, 222; massacre of Greek Jews, 254–55; millet of, 13; Ottoman, Protestant mission to, 20–21; scholarships for Jewish students, 369; in Thessaloniki, 21, 180–82, 213, 215, 223, 225, 254–56 Jivanian, Marderos, 427n75 Johns Hopkins University designation, 404 Johnson, H. H., 197 Johnson, John (U.S. Consul General), 249–51 Johnson, Thomas, 299, 466n54 Johnston, Howard, as Anatolia’s sixth president, 298–314, 339, 383, 406 Johnston, Jeanne Sheetz, 298, 303, 308–10 Jordan, Michael, 373 Judaism. See Jews Junta, Greek, 320–30, 332, 335–40, 343–50, 359, 364–65, 375, 406 Kabakjian, Dikran, 125 Kabakjian, H. H., 111 “Kaimakam,” 437n13

Kalogeropoulou, Bernice, 283 Kalogiannis, Stavros, 350 Kalopothakes, Michael, 186–87 Kaloustian, Arslialouis Der, 97 Kanellis, Eva, 380 Kanellis, Panos, 367 Kantarji, Vasiliki, 120 kapicilar, 199 Kapodistrias (Capodistrias), Ioannis, 20 Kapoutzides (later Pylea), 199–201 Karademos, Demetrios, 283, 299 Karakasidou, Anastasia, 467n71 Karalia, Fofo (Sofia) Engonopoulou, 200, 277, 466n56 Karalias, George, 308 Karamanlides, 51 “Karamanlidika,” 19 Karamanlis, Constantine (Greek Prime Minister), xx, 298, 336, 340, 359 Karamanlis, Constantinos (Kostas) (member of Greek Parliament, later Prime Minister), 393 Kara Tepe, 200 Karavelas, Sophocles, 282 Kastritsis, Patricia Atkins, 356, 374, 378 Katerini, Greece, 178, 186 katharevousa, 321 Katos, Athanasios, 388 Katsanos, Constantine, 301 Kawai, Sumie, 324 Kayayan, Hovannes T., 56, 79, 82, 85–66, 425n64 Kazazis, Deborah Brown, 390, 397, 399 Kazezian, Floritsa, 119 Keeley, James H., Jr., 240 Keeley, Robert V., 366 Kehayias, Anastasios, 355 Kelsey, Lincoln D., 159 Kemal, Mustapha, 162, 187 Kemalist regime/Atatürk, Kemal, 162, 164, 171, 174, 177, 187, 232 Kennedy, John Stuart, 132 Kennedy, Joseph S., Anatolia’s eighth president, 330–35, 337, 406 Kennedy, Thomas F., 287 Kennedy Home, 133 Kent, Millicent, 277–78 Kent, Ralph, 285 Kerasun (Giresun), Turkey, 98, 167 Kerimis, Nikolas and Lois Reiss, 269 Ketani, Zeki, 164, 441n55

498

Index

Kibadjian, Senekerim, 427n75 kindergarten, 107, 119, 122, 151, 403, 430n32 King, Churchill, 440n45 King, Jonas, 444n13 King, Martha A., 56, 88, 90, 93, 96–97, 151, 405 King-Crane Commission, 160 King (Martha A.) Memorial School for the Deaf, 96–97, 107, 119, 130, 145, 148–51, 405 King’s Fund, 288 Kizilbashes, 14 Klydjian, Shnorhig, 120, 145–46, 437n13 Kofokotsiou, Mary Stephanidou, 289 Kofos, Evangelos, 303 Kojayan, Garabed K., 144 Kokkini-Tsikriki, Danae, 288 Kokklitou-Routsoni, Alexandra, 289 Koliais, Helen, 356 Koliopoulos, John, 385, 388, 393 Kolsouzian, Mikran, 206 Konia, Turkey, 163, 227, 424n57 Kontopoulos, Theodoseos, 265 Kontozoglou, Marika, 281, 283, 305 Koraïs School, 254, 257–58, 261–64, 279, 281–82, 332, 406 Koran, 8–9, 19 Kosmopoulou, Efthymia Stergiou, 249 Koumari-Sanford, Ariadne, 309 Kouyoumjian, Sima, 119 Kouzoujak, Anthe, 166 Kouzoujakoglou (later Couzinos), Efthymios N., 169 Kria Vrisi (Cold Spring), 358–59 Krikore, Baron, 32 Ktenides, Joseph T., 363, 427n75 Kurds, 13–14, 121, 160 Kyriakakis, Aristidis, 283, 311, 332, 347 Kyriakides, Lucas Petrou, 433n66 Kyriakidou-Nestor, Alki, 350, 385 Kyriakou, Vasilis K., 178 Kyriazi-Falari, Margarita. See Falari, Margarita Kyrides, Aspasia, 125 Kyrides, Lucas Petrou, 125–26, 299–300, 370 Kyrides Hall, 300–303, 306, 370, 389, 406 Kyrlangitsi, Irini, 466n56 Ladas, Pericles, 301 Ladas, Stephen, 301 Ladas Hall, 301–2, 406 Ladd, Daniel, 21

Lagoudakis, Charilaos G., 178 Lake, Carrie, 285 Lake, Leo C., 111 Lalatsis, Yiannis, 319 Lamb, Curtis, 221–22, 369 Lambrakis, Gregory, 305 Lambrinidou, Athina, 467n69 Lambrinos, George D., 168 Lancaster System of Mutual Instruction, 20 Land and Revolution in Modern Greece, 1800– 1881 (McGrew), xxi languages, 109–10, 113; acquisition of, 18–19; foreign, in Greece, 297; vernacular, 18–19, 24, 27, 36, 52, 56, 64, 96, 99, 109, 138, 186. See also under Bible: missionaries’ translation/circulation of language school founded by Alumni Association, 266 languages (instruction in), 27, 112–13; the Williams laboratory, 302–3. See also specific languages Lansdale, Bruce, 368 Lausanne Peace Conference, 171, 175 Lausanne Treaty, 171–72, 206, 406, 459n9 La Verne, University of, 386, 393 Laz, 14, 167 Lazarides, Anastas, 177 Lazaridis, George-Emmanuel, 467n66 Lazaridou, Despina, 278, 311 League of Nations, 126, 171, 182, 190, 247, 459n9 Lefkohori village, Greece, 286–87 Leonard, Amelia Gilbert, 32, 35, 93 Leonard, Joseph, 38 Leonard, Julius Y., 32, 34–35, 62, 419n7 Lesvos (Mitilini), island of, 369 Liatsos, Vasilis, 220, 281, 285 liberal arts, 210–15, 220–21, 226, 266–67, 383–89, 392, 395–97 Liberal Arts, School of (SBALA), 385–90 libraries, xviii, xxi, 210, 218, 228–29, 235–38, 240, 249, 251, 259, 263, 270–71, 273, 277, 288, 298–301, 303, 311, 319, 355–56, 391; Anatolia Library (in Turkey), 58, 111, 113, 119–20, 125–26, 128, 132–33, 144, 165, 168; Bissell Library (ACT), 397–401, 404, 407; Eleftheriades Library, 373–74, 391–92, 406 Lietzau, Lena L., 223 Litton Industries, 463n2 Loehr, Alexander, 252 London Lodge, 209–10

Index 499 Lordian, Caspar H., 427n75 Lovelace, Miles, 331 Lowrie, Donald, 234 lyceums, 216, 223, 319–21, 341, 346–47, 355, 361, 363, 374, 377, 404, 464n13 Macedonia, xvii–xviii, 3, 13, 100, 175–76, 179, 181–83, 186–87, 190–91, 200, 211, 239, 251–53, 256, 311, 456n34 Macedonia, University of, 388 Macedonia Hall, 230, 232, 235–36, 239, 248–49, 252, 259, 262–63, 277, 299, 301–2, 321, 340, 348, 373, 382 MacVeagh, Lincoln (U.S. Ambassador to Greece), 235 Maden, Turkey, 165, 440n48 Main Hall, 116, 159 Makarios III, Archbishop, 336 Makridis, Petros, 375, 391, 399 malaria, xvii, 184–84, 195, 200, 208, 221, 239, 296, 446n42 Malone, Patricia L., 384 Malta, 6–7, 19, 46 Managers, Board of. See Board of Managers, Anatolia Manissadjian, Barsam, 53, 55, 437n12 Manissadjian, J. J., 110, 114 Manissadjian, Mihran H., 427n75 Manousarides, Nicholas, 99 Marathon Field, 210 Marchetich, Mr., 110 Marden, Jesse Krekore, 95–96, 110, 132, 144, 147–49, 156, 163, 169, 183, 197, 240, 447n17 Marden, Lucy Morley, 96, 148 Margot, Felix, 110 Markham, Christopher, 356, 378 Markoglou, George, 250, 254 Marshall Plan, 295 Marsovan (ABCFM) mission station, 30–36, 39, 41, 43, 51–52, 64, 72, 81, 89–90, 98, 101, 146, 405, 418n68, 419n1; Anatolia College as “eye of,” 67; Armenians and, 30–36; crisis of mid-1890s, 67, 79–86; emissaries, characteristics of, 52; role, changing perception of, 104–7; success of, 38 Marsovan Evangelical Church, 60, 76 Marsovan (Merzifon), Turkey, 52, 366, 405–6; town of, 2–3, 31, 33, 35–36, 50, 72, 89, 97–98. See also specific topics,

e.g., Armenians; Christian minorities; Harbinger High School Marsovan Theological Seminary, 1–2, 34–36, 38–46, 49–57, 60–61, 98–100, 103–7, 133, 405, 416n51, 417n64, 417n67, 418n67, 423n47; ABCFM authority over, 86, 130, 234; alumni of, 61, 124, 168, 178, 242; closing of, 140, 158, 174; as complementary to Girls School and Anatolia College, 34–35, 64, 67, 72, 74, 93, 112–13, 130, 133, 135, 210; directorship of, 100, 106–7, 156; as eclipsed by the College, 214 Marston, Ann, 76, 133, 424n54 Martin, John, 245 Martin, Patrick, 356 Massachusetts, 366; Anatolia’s incorporation in, 86, 196–97, 369, 404–5. See also Boston massacres. See under Armenians: massacre of; Jews: massacre of Greek Jews Mastoroyiannis, Angelos, 377 mathematics, 25, 55, 64, 111–13, 118–20, 144, 166, 206, 218, 220, 224, 281, 283, 321–22, 337, 347, 353, 386, 390, 395, 404 Matthews, Alexander, 369 Mavrophidou-Eleftheriades, Olga, 270, 374 Mavropoulos, Theodore, 324, 345 Mavrorachi, Greece, 287–89 Mavroudi, Maria, 467n71 May, Rollo, 221 McGrew, Melina Vouloni, 352, 382 McGrew, Panayiota “Titika” Vouloni, 352 McGrew, William, Anatolia’s ninth president, ix, xxi, 337–82, 393, 399, 406 McKeen, Bob, 331 McNeill, William H., 369 Mead, Hunter, 221, 448n35 medical work, in Turkey, 92–96 Medzarents, Misak, 127 “Megale Idea” (Great Idea), 189 Mendenhall, W. W., 288 Merrill, Miss, 135 Merzifon, Turkey. See Marsovan Metaxas, Ioannis, xviii, 213, 235, 242–45, 250, 263, 267 Metropoulos, P. M., 111 Michael Anagnos Schools, 369 Michaelidou, Anna, 263 Michalopoulos, George, 200, 338, 346–47 Mihitsopoulos, Aristidis E., 188, 190

500

Index

millet system, 9–13, 47, 59, 67–68; Armenian, 13, 21, 102, 141; Christian, 137; Greek, 12, 102; Jewish, 13; Protestant, 23, 29; for Roman Catholic Armenians, 23; rum millet (Orthodox Christian community), 12 Mills, Samuel J., 3 Ministry of Education, Greek. See Greek Ministry of Education Minnesota, 56, 90, 124, 153, 170, 176, 226, 386 Minnesota Hall, 230, 235–36, 244, 248, 252, 259, 262, 301–2, 351, 373 Mirakian, Vahan M., 111 missionaries/mission service, 61–63; American Protestant, in the Near East, 2–8, 233; Catholic, 33–34, 413n22; in Greece, 185–91; offspring of, 91; in the Ottoman Empire, 11, 16–30, 38, 49, 98, 127; role of, 24; shift in emphasis, 102–3; “The Third Great Awakening,” 97; three fundamental tasks of, 18, 20; Turkey, missionary movement in, 1–48; in Turkey after WWI, 192–94; two distinct profiles of, 46–47; women and, 63–67, 90, 119. See also American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; Marsovan mission station Missionary Herald (M. H.), 420n18, 422n44, 440n47 missionary societies, American Protestant, xv, 4, 7 Mission School in Thessaloniki, 190, 192 mission schools, 19, 60, 102, 112, 120, 190, 192, 198–99, 223, 313, 316 Mission to Western Asia, 6 Mitropoulos, Dimitris, 273 Mitsotakis, Constantinos (Greek Prime Minister), 393 Mobias (originally Mubayajoglou), Christopher, 127 Model United Nations (MUN), 347–48, 378 Mohammed II, Sultan, 9 Monuments of Thessaloniki (Papahadjis), 303 Moore, Edward, 171 Moore, Elbert E., Jr., 370–71 Moralis, Petros, 364 Morgenthau, Henry (U.S. Ambassador to Turkey), 139, 144, 146, 153, 183, 191, 436n4 Morley, Bertha, 143, 146, 148–50, 158, 192, 199, 226, 239, 242, 263

Morley House, 229, 244, 249, 252, 260, 262, 278, 302, 380 The Morning Cometh: 45 Years with Anatolia College (Compton), 366 Moslems. See Muslims Mountain Day, 115, 341 Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, 35, 65 Mouradoglou, Achileas, 240 Mouradoglou, Christos, 178 Mt. Olympus. See Olympus, Mt. Mubayajoglou (Mobias), Christopher, 127 Mudros Armistice, 155, 157, 405 museum, Anatolia College (in Turkey), 113–14 Musgrove, Robert W., 315, 317, 325, 328, 331 music/musical activities: Anatolia Chorale, 325, 378; in Greece, 217–18, 238, 241, 265, 273, 283–84, 298, 300, 324–25, 361, 366, 378–79, 396, 437n13, 467n66; in Turkey, 28, 64, 111–12, 114–15, 118–19, 127, 159 Muslims, 8, 122, 348, 412n11, 442n68, 444n7; “adopted” Christian children taken from, 161, 440n47; and apostasy, 9, 16; Christian-Muslim relations, 122–23; ethnic and linguistic groups of, 14; graduate of Anatolia, 135; missionaries and, 16–30, 104, 174, 233; NER teams and, 161, 440n47; proselytism as forbidden, xvi, xviii, 16; as refugees, 62, 137, 151, 158, 182–83, 444n7; as students/efforts to reach, 56, 61–62, 121–23, 141, 147, 154, 163, 193, 214, 436n6; in Thessaloniki, Greece, 180, 183. See also Islam; Ottoman Empire; specific topics, e.g., millet system Mussolini, Benito, xviii, 126, 245 “Mutasarif,” 437n13 Myer, Lee, 230, 236, 239 My Quest for Beauty (May), 221 Mytikas peak, Mt. Olympus, 342–43 Nanos, Peter, 390 Nansen, Fridtjof, 300, 459n9 Nansen Home, 300 Nasla-Hadjiparaskeva, Tanoula, 289 nationalism, xvi, 12, 21, 68–70, 76–78, 83, 109, 268; vs. evangelism, 76–78. See also under Turkey: nationalism, rise of national scholars, 317–19, 325, 327, 357–59, 380

Index 501 National Youth Organization (EON), 242–43 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization Nazi occupation of Greece, 250–56 Near East: American Protestant missionary movement in, 2–8; U.S. geopolitical interests in, 172. See also Ottoman Empire Near East College Association (NECA), 273–74, 279, 307, 309, 316 Near East Relief (NER), 153–59, 163, 165– 70, 173, 406, 439n33, 440n45; operations in Greece, 175, 183, 192, 196–97, 205–6, 208, 218, 226–27, 230, 232, 295; treatment of Muslims by, 161, 440n47; White as a director, 153, 156 Near East School of Theology, 198, 233 NEASC. See New England Association of Schools and Colleges NECA. See Near East College Association Nerso, Ghazaras, 59 Nerso, N. L., 111, 144 Nestor, Alki Kyriakidou, 350, 385 Neuilly, Treaty of, 181 Newberry, Harrie R., 80–82 New Democracy governing party, 376, 393 New England, 3 New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), xxi, 389–90, 395, 398–99 Niarchos (Stavros S.) Foundation, 404 Nichol, Helen, 290 Nicholas, George, 228 Nicholas Demos Foundation, 369 Nicholas II, Tsar, 141–42 Nicolaidou, Aphrodite, 98 Nicosia, Fulbright Commission in, 340 Nikolaou, Michaelis, 345, 355, 377 Niles, Thomas (U.S. Ambassador to Greece), 299, 393–94 Nollen, Hanna, 225 Nollen, Sara, 225 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 296, 330, 340, 352, 359, 397, 403 Nouskas, Constantine, 283 Noyes, Fanny G., 95, 156, 168 nurses’ training program, 95 Oberlin College, 56, 91, 156, 159, 197, 215, 221, 275; as model for Anatolia, 111, 130, 214, 383, 467n71

Odell, Jeannette, 199 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), 392–93, 470n33 Oikonomidou-Baglani, Anastasia, 283, 355 Olympus, Mt., 179, 200, 203, 237, 341–43, 352, 366, 382, 395 Olympus Hall, 278, 299–300, 302, 314 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 392–93, 470n33 Oriental Churches, 16–17, 22, 48 Oriental society/culture, 47, 103 orphans/orphanages: “adopted” Christian children taken from Muslims, 161, 440n47; Christian orphans, 152, 157, 161, 165, 168, 440n47; in Greece, 177, 205, 218, 226, 230, 264; Muslim orphans, 157; in Turkey, 65, 90, 93–94, 149, 152, 157, 165–66, 168, 173, 208, 218, 440n47 Orthodox religion, 11–12, 69, 277; instruction in (Greece), 212–15, 220; rum millet, 12. See also Greek Orthodox Church; Oriental Churches Osman, Topal, 167, 412n11 Ottoman, the term, 412n11 Ottoman Empire, 8, 180, 188, 199, 253, 362; as ABCFM’s third field of operations, 5, 7, 49, 127, 405, 415n39; decline and collapse of, 67–71, 85, 120–21, 129, 137–38; Marsovan mission station in, 38, 81; missionary-sponsored education in, 2, 49, 127; missionary strategies in, 16–30; religious minorities in, 7, 10, 14, 16, 67–71, 160, 164; society in, 8–16; “Western Asia Mission,” 5; Westerners in, xv–xvi, 1–48, 70–71, 140; and World War I, 140, 155, 160. See also Christian minorities; specific topics, e.g., millet system “outstations,” 30, 32, 34–35, 38, 61–62, 188 Ozanian, K. M., 143 Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party (PASOK), 359, 361–62, 364–65, 376, 387 Panorama, 200, 235, 252, 280, 300–301 Panorama Road, 251, 262, 272, 276, 355, 374 Papacharissi, Zizi A., 467n71 Papadakis, Professor, 240 Papademas, Vasilis “Lakis,” 347, 384 Papademetriou, Agni, 332, 358 Papadimitriou, Lambros, 220, 281

502

Index

Papadopoulos, Antonis, 270–71 Papadopoulos, Aristides, 335 Papadopoulos, Christos Theologos, 178 Papadopoulos, Georgios (Prime Minister), 322 Papadopoulos, Timotheos M., 159 Papadopoulou, Venetia Hatzizani, 282 Papadopoulou-Couloumbi, Zoi, 288–89 Papaevgeniou, Athanasios, 291 Papageorgiou, Costas, 359 Papahadzis, Nikolas, 282, 303, 324 Papandreou, Andreas, xx, 359, 364 Papandreou, George, 320–21, 381 Papanoutsos, Evangelos, 320–21, 345–46 Paparallis, Ioannis, 324, 332, 334, 345 Papastavrou, Ioannis, 219, 269 Papastavrou, Vasilis, 269 Papathemelis, Stelios, 363 Papavasiliou, Fotini (“Nina”), 467n71 Papazian, Marie, 120 Papidou-Electri, Chrysoula, 288 Papinkis, Ioannis, 324 Pappajohn, John, 369 Pappas, Anastasios, 283, 300, 325 Pappas, Paula, 356 Pappas, Thomas A., 297, 317, 397 Pappas, Vasso, 356 Pappas Hall, 325, 374 Paralis, George, 220, 251, 281, 324 Pararas, Lambros, 219, 281–83 Paraskevaides, Marika (“Meddy”) Florentin, 255 Paraskevaides, Stratos, 255, 303, 453n20 Paraskevas, Foivos, 377 Paraskevopoulos, General, 187 Parents Association, Anatolia, 344–45, 350, 363, 365 Paris Peace Conference, 160, 188 Parmalee, Ruth, 205, 447n17 Parsons, Justin W., 62 Parsons, Levi, 5, 7 Pasha, Husref, 80–81, 424n58 Pasha, Nurettin, 165 PASOK (Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party). See Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party Patras, Dimitris, 467n66 Patriarch, Greek Orthodox (Ecumenical), in Constantinople, 12, 20 Patriarch, Gregorian (Armenian), in Constantinople, 32 Patriarchate, Greek Orthodox (Ecumenical), in Constantinople, 12, 69

Paul, King, 300 Pavlides, Anastasios S., 168 Pavlides, Iakovos, 242 Pavlides, Pavlos, 242 Pears, Sir Edwin, 135 Pearson, Dr. and Mrs. D. K., 58, 131 Peck, Esther, 245 Peck, Gunther, 357 Peet, William, 89, 146, 149–53, 163, 175, 193, 438n21 Pehliwanzade, Noureddin H., 135 Pelion, Mt., 126, 343 Peloponnesus, Greece, 20, 256, 317 Pepeyan, Hohannes K., 427n75 “Pericles” mission, 255 Perry, Alexander, 370 Persia, 3–4, 7–9, 12–13, 69, 100 Personnel (later Willard) House, 276, 325, 403 Peter, William, 143–44, 437nn12–13 Petris, Nicholas, 369 Petritsi-Georganta, Theodora, 289 Petrou, Loucas, 433n66 Petsas, Fotios, 388 Pettibone, I. F., 35 Phelps, Annie, 156 Philadelphefs, Pantelis, 99 Philadelphevs, Galene, 96, 120 philanthropy, xv, 217, 266 philosophy, study of, 56, 64, 111, 113, 125 Phoutrides, Aristides, 228 Phoutrides, Margaret Garrison, 228 Pierce College, 290–91, 305, 322, 348, 445n24 Pinewood Schools—Thessaloniki International High School, 310–12, 335, 357, 375, 403 Piney Woods School, 277–78, 310 Piraeus, 186, 252–53, 340 Piranian, Boghos, 116, 432n51 Platiridou, Olga, 254, 261, 281, 309, 315, 328 Platt, Claribel, 119 Plousios, Christos, 319 Pohl, Ilse, 199 Polemarchakis, Michael, 243 Polk, George, 269–70 Polydendri, Greece, 288, 300 “Polytechnic Day,” 336 Pontus Evangelistic Association, 2, 42, 50, 55, 72–73, 418n68, 423n47 Pontus region, Turkey, xvi, 11, 24, 98–99, 114, 164–65, 167–68, 177, 269, 287, 366

Index 503 postgraduate study, Anatolia graduates and, xix, 50, 113, 125–27, 210–11, 343, 353–54, 380, 386, 397, 403, 467n71 Powers, P. O., 31 preparatory program (Greece), 211 preparatory school/division (Turkey), 40, 51, 90, 112, 115, 130, 133, 135, 168 Presbyterian Church/Presbyterianism, 4, 16, 52, 186, 198, 298, 415n39 presidency/presidents of Anatolia College. See Anatolia College, presidency/ presidents of President’s House, 229, 244 Presset, Emmanuel, 110–11 primary schools. See elementary schools Princeton University, 52, 91, 232, 341, 354, 357, 403 print shop, 299, 303, 319 private education in Greece. See under Greece: private education in proselytism: Greek ban on, xviii, 185–86; Muslim ban on, xvi, xviii, 16 Protestantism: in Greece, 185–91; missionary movement in Turkey, 1–48; tenets of, 20, 45–46; in Turkey, 16–17, 20, 25, 30, 39, 69, 84, 99, 104–5, 111, 126, 134, 415n39. See also American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; specific denominations, e.g., Congregational Church Protestant millet, 23, 29 Protestant missionary societies, xv, 4, 7 Prudential Committee, ABCFM, 16, 26–27, 58, 73–75, 78, 81, 86, 93, 108, 225–26, 417n67, 418n69, 426n68, 430n32, 446n34; and Anatolia College, founding of, 36–38, 40, 42–44; and Anatolia’s relocation to Greece, 196–98; Board of Trustees becoming independent from, 223, 226–27; as Board’s executive organ, 73; early Board of Trustees as identical to, 130–32, 196, 233–34 Pye, Ernest, 106, 113, 147, 149, 156, 198, 234 Pye, Etta Dickinson, 147 Pylea campus, Thessaloniki, 199–201, 205, 208, 210, 218, 226–32, 235–37, 257, 260– 61, 301–2, 406; Girls School relocated to, 244–45, 260, 263, 271–72, 276–78, 406; as hospital, 248–49, 406. See also under Anatolia College, campus of: in Greece Pylea community, 302 Pyrros, Demetris, 467n69

Quaintance, Richard, 309 Quonset huts, 259, 277 Racopoulos, John G., 201 Raphael, Antigone, 370, 379 Raphael, Frank (Phanos), 370, 379 Raphael Hall, 374, 403, 406 Raptelis (Demosthenis) Foundation, 369 rayah status, 9 Reconstruction in Turkey, 154–55 Red Cross, 89, 141, 148, 183, 257, 287, 295; “for Students,” 217 Reed College, 354, 386 refugees. See under specific groups and locations, e.g., Armenians; Greece; Muslims Refugee Settlement Commission (RSC), 182–84, 189, 191 religious dimension of Anatolia College, 197–98, 213–15, 313 religious minorities in the Ottoman Empire, 7, 10, 14, 16, 160, 164 Rhigas Ferraios School, 403 Riess, Lois, 269 Riggs, Alice Shepard, 244, 248–50, 256, 261, 273–74, 300 Riggs, Charles T., 91, 233, 426n68 Riggs, Doris R., 331, 333–34, 359 Riggs, Edward, 58, 60–62, 75, 78, 80–83, 87–88, 91, 95, 109–10, 116, 132, 135, 138, 159, 171, 219, 417n65, 419n9, 419n13, 422n43, 425n59; as an Anatolia founder, 19, 39, 41, 43–44, 67, 232; background of, 100; character/personality of, 100; as Marsovan missionary, 39, 41, 43–44, 52; as Seminary director, 100, 106–7 Riggs, Elias, 19, 185–86, 232 Riggs, Ernest W., 171, 174–75, 185, 219, 228, 244, 277, 300, 449n49; as ABCFM Foreign Secretary, 174, 233; abolishing Board of Managers, 237–39; and advanced studies initiative, 383; appointment as president, 233–34; background of, 232–34; as fourth Anatolia president, xix, 19, 233–41, 248–50, 253–54, 256–67, 272–74, 307, 406, 450n60; as missionary educator, 232–42, 274, 450n60 Riggs, Henry H., 91, 172, 233, 440n47, 450n57 Riggs, Mary, 91

504

Index

Riggs, Sarah, 65, 90–91 Riggs, Susan. See Getchell, Susan (Riggs) Riggs, Theodore, 159, 169, 175, 185, 219, 232 Riggs family, 232–33 Riggs Hall, 277, 285, 302, 377, 406 Robert, Christopher R., 28 Robert College, 28–29, 44, 46, 73–74, 91, 129, 132, 154, 197, 220, 234, 240, 285, 289, 304, 306, 320; success of, 36 Robinson, J. E., 391 Rockwell, Paul, 334 Roman Catholic Church, 7, 13, 17, 21, 45, 69, 140–41, 360; Armenians, Roman Catholic, 23, 436n11; institutions, 109; missionaries, 33–34, 413n22; in the Ottoman Empire, 26 Roosevelt, Theodore, 432n55 Rossides, Eugene T., 341 Routsoni, Alexandra Kokklitou, 289 RSC (Refugee Settlement Commission), 182–84, 189, 191 Russia, 13, 31, 62, 114, 204; students from/ Russian language, 100, 109–10, 114–15, 140, 167, 169, 397, 440n42. See also World War I Russo-Turkish war, 68–70, 109 Saduk Bey Mehami, 163, 441n53 Salonica, Greece, 21; Salonica station, 184– 88, 444n16. See also Thessaloniki, Greece Samsun, Turkey, 29–30, 33, 61–62, 97–99, 126, 129, 143, 156, 162–63, 165, 168–69, 177, 441n51 Sanford, Ariadne Koumari, 309 Sanford, William, 285, 303, 309 Sarakaki-Alexiadou, Ioanna, 375 Sarbanes, Paul (U.S. Senator), 364 Sather, Edgar, 324, 328 SBALA (School of Business Administration and Liberal Arts), 385–90, 406 Scarlatos, Elizabeth, 279 Schauffler, William G., 19–20 scholarships. See financial aid School of Business Administration and Liberal Arts (SBALA), 385–90, 406. See also American College of Thessaloniki (ACT) Schoppert, Gail, 331, 339, 357 Schoppert, Ruth, 339 science, 11, 102, 127, 221, 467n71; facilities/ laboratories, xxi, 129, 210, 229, 235,

237, 240, 277, 283, 285, 299–301, 306, 319, 323, 361, 374, 377, 387–88, 403; instruction in/study of, xxi, 25, 27–28, 93, 110, 113–14, 118–19, 125, 133, 218, 221, 386–88; practical applications and experimentation, 237, 283, 323 Scriptures. See Bible secondary schools, xv, 105, 244, 263–64, 394, 465n45. See also under Anatolia College: as secondary-level institution in Turkey; Anatolia College, divisions of Secretarial School, Anatolia, 306, 325, 356, 362, 384, 388–89, 406 secular education, 27, 40, 45, 105, 197, 214, 445n25 Seeley, Jay S., 255 Self-Help, 25, 28, 57–59, 107, 111, 114, 131, 144, 158–59, 208–9, 229, 319 Self-Study, 390, 395, 398 seminaries, 27, 36–37, 44, 50, 105, 109, 172, 174, 198. See also Bebek Seminary; Marsovan Theological Seminary Sensemann, Harley, 452n2 Septuagint, 186 Serbia, 68, 100, 188, 200, 397, 403 Sèvres, Treaty of, 164, 171 Sewny, Levon H, 218–19 Sewny, Lillian Cole, 218–19, 236 Sgourou, Eleni, 332, 346, 355, 377 Shallcross, William J., 227 Shaw, Albert, 197, 227 Short, Joseph, 398 Sianos, Constantinos, 257 Sibley, Hiram, 279 Sideropoulos, Haralambos, 177 Siegfried, William, 356 Sinanoglou, Irene, 320 Sinanoglou, Vasilis, 320 Sirinidis, Stephanos, 108 Sivaslian, Arakel G., 41, 55, 111, 144 Sivaslian, Hovannes, 167 Sivas province, Turkey, 31–34, 40, 51–52, 70, 80, 92, 112, 124, 133, 143, 145–47, 149, 162–63, 218, 417n62 Slavic peoples, 21, 180–82, 187 Small, Veo E., 285 Smallwood, Osborn, 284 Smith, Azariah, 414n33 Smith, Bertha, 35, 66, 91, 93 Smith, Eli, 6–7 Smith, Jane, 91

Index 505 Smith, John F., 32, 34–35, 39, 52, 57, 62, 66, 75–76, 82, 88, 91, 93, 100, 138 Smith, Judson, 55, 58, 81–82, 84 Smith, Sarah Sears, 91, 112 Smyrna, Turkey, 2, 7, 13, 18–20, 29–30, 30, 43, 46, 53, 99, 124, 126, 143, 146, 162, 177, 180, 187, 192, 219–20, 445n24; city of, 15. See also International College, Smyrna social sciences, 321, 386, 395 sociology, 113–14, 213 Sofia, Bulgaria, 180. See also American College of Sofia Sophouli. See Allatini (Sophouli) site/Girls School Sossides, Yiannis, 244 Sossides family, 251–52 Soter (Soteriades), Elias, 317 Sougaraki, Ifigeneia, 352 southeastern Europe, xviii, 70, 180, 223 Soviet Union, 177, 206–7, 295, 297 sports. See athletics Spyrides, K., 445n24 staff, Anatolia College. See Anatolia College, faculty and staff of Stafford, Russell Henry, 229, 234, 238, 299 Staktopoulos, Gregorios, 269–70 Stamoulas, Stergios, 342 Statiropoulos, Ioannes G., 126 Statiropoulos, J. G., 111, 117 Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation, 404 Stefa, Eleni (Lina), 358, 377 Stein, Irwin, 356–57 Stephanides, Charalambos, 447n6 Stephanidou-Kofokotsiou, Mary, 289 Stephens, Everett W., 221, 245, 307–8, 312, 314, 316, 328–29, 331, 333–34, 349, 351, 360, 366, 368 Stephens, Mary, 245, 351, 366 Stephens Hall, 351, 358, 373, 388, 391 Stergiou-Kosmopoulou, Efthymia, 249 Stone, Thomas, 356, 378 Storrs, Richard, 103 Stoyiannos, Panos, 363 Strauss, Lewis, Jr., 369 student body, Anatolia. See Anatolia College, student body of Styllas, Michael, 343 sultans, 6, 8–9, 11–12, 15–16, 23, 70–71, 79, 85, 108, 173, 412n11. See also individual names, e.g., Abdul Hamid II Surpless, James, 225

Surpless, Mary S. Hill, 225, 369 Survival Against All Odds: The First 100 Years of Anatolia College (Stephens and Stephens), 366 Sutphen, Joseph, 31 Syria, 3–4, 6–7, 12, 155, 415n39 Syrian Protestant College, 36, 124, 129, 178 Syropoulos, Constantinos, 358 Syros Island, Greece, 205, 218, 230, 236 Takas, Vasilis, 466n56 Talaat Bey, 438n22 Talbot, Phillips (U.S. Ambassador to Greece), 322 Talks on the Veranda in a Far-Away Land (Tracy), 418n68 tanzimat, 11 Tashjian, Armenag H., 125–26 Tavantzis, Helen, 356 Taylor, Josephine, 94 Taylor, William M., 284–85 teachers. See Anatolia College, faculty and staff; individual names; specific divisions, e.g., Girls School teachers’ union, 344, 347, 365, 376 Telfeyan, Sarkis G., 135 Temple, Daniel, 6, 18–21, 46 Temurian, Daniel, 427n75 theater, 217, 222, 226, 237, 265, 300, 324, 356–57, 363, 378, 391, 397 Theocharides, Demetrios, 56, 111, 119, 134, 159, 167, 242 Theocharides, Haris, 242–43 Theocharidou, Anna, 284 Theodore, D. E., 440n48 Theodosopoulos, Theodore, 464n25 theological seminaries. See seminaries Theophilis, Georgia, 261 Thermaic Gulf, 200, 203, 226 Thessaloniki, University of, 220, 240, 243, 264, 269, 271, 282, 286, 290, 319, 343, 350, 385, 393 Thessaloniki Evangelical Church, 190 Thessaloniki International High School, 310–12. See also Pinewood Schools Thessaloniki (Salonica), Greece; alumni in (SAAK), 352, 380; city of, xvii, 179–80, 185, 199, 203–4, 239, 253, 278, 296. See also Anatolia College; specific topics and events, e.g., World War II Thiessen, Carl, 299, 317

506

Index

“Third Great Awakening,” 97 Thomas, Ione, 288 Thomas, John, 287–88 Thomas A. Pappas Foundation, 387 Thompson, David P., 424n58 Thompson, W. S., 229 Thoumayan, Garabed, 53, 55, 73, 75–77, 79, 82–83, 85–86, 423n47, 425n64, 426n70; as first Board of Managers chairman, 83, 85 Thoumayan-Rossier de Vismes, Lucie, 76, 83, 85, 94 Thrace, province of, 3, 100, 137, 164, 171, 181–83, 187, 204, 252 Tiflis, Georgia, 169 Tiriki, Theano, 249, 263, 270 Tocat, Turkey, 34, 51, 62, 427n75 Topal Osman, 167, 412n11 Tousi, Elena, 466n56 Towle, Ella R., 96, 133 Toynbee, Arnold, 143, 436n10 Tracy, Annie, 91 Tracy, Charles C., xvi, 35, 50–52, 58, 71, 73, 76–78, 81, 101, 105, 138, 409–10, 417n64, 420n21, 421n26, 426n72; as an Anatolia founder, 39–41, 44, 66–67; background of, 54, 58–59; and Board of Trustees, 196, 434n82; campus, developing/ modernizing, 57–58, 114, 129–34; character and qualities of, 54–55, 57–59, 138, 209, 214, 419n13; as first Anatolia president, 52, 54–55, 61, 63, 66, 405; fundraising by, 58, 114, 131–34; goals and vision for Anatolia, 60, 107, 121–23, 128–29, 131, 154; resuming presidency, 82, 84, 86, 88, 90–95, 110, 114, 120, 128– 32, 405, 426n68; retirement/departure of, 123, 130, 132–34, 138, 174; statement, “Cooperation in Anatolia College, Facts Concerning the Past and Present,” 76–77; Talks on the Veranda in a Far-Away Land, 418n68; White and, 54, 138, 154, 198, 208 Tracy, Charles K., 91 Tracy, Henry Chester, 91 Tracy, Mary, 430n32 Tracy, Mary (Riggs), 91 Tracy, Myra H. (Park), 35, 54, 58, 65, 90, 93, 134 Tracy, Myra (the Tracys’ third child), 428n9 Tracy Hall, 209–10, 374 “Tracy Kindergarten,” 430n32

Trakatellis, Antonios, 393 Transcaucasia, 142, 160, 164, 166, 169 transportation, in Greece, xix, 200, 204, 236, 264, 296, 298, 355, 375 Treaty of Lausanne. See Lausanne treaty Treaty of Neuilly, 181 Treaty of Sèvres, 164, 171 Trebizond, Turkey, 22, 31, 40, 87, 98, 112, 148, 414n33, 414n35 Triantafilidou Amarantidou, Despina, 278 Triantaphilides, George, 98 Truman Doctrine, 295 trustees. See Board of Trustees Tsikoudas, Evangellos, 286 Tsikriki, Danae Kokkini, 288 Tsitsiringos, Kostas, 280 Tsivilikas, Vasilis, 300 Tsokos, Alekos, 375 Tsolakoglou, Georgios, 251–52 Tsoukala, Philomila, 468n71 tuition. See Anatolia College, tuition for Tupper, Alice, 148, 438n21 Turkey, 1–178, 405; Anatolia College in, 49–178, 405–6; Christian minorities in, xvi–xvii, 8–16, 19, 30, 34, 47, 67–71, 127, 162, 170–71, 173, 188; “colleges” under missionary leadership in, 32, 37, 39; foreign schools in, 71, 129, 172, 420n17; missionary movement/ Protestant missionaries in, xv–xvi, 1–48, 140, 233; mission enterprise after WWI, 192–94, 198–99; nationalism, rise of/nationalist government, xvii–xviii, 108–9, 120, 137, 139, 162–68, 170–74, 192–93, 198–99, 441n51; and property rights for foreigners, 85, 420n17, 441n53; religious communities in, 14; theocratic polity of, 8; United States and, 23, 71; xenophobia in, xvii, 93, 172, 174. See also Western Turkey Mission; specific locations, events, and topics, e.g., Amasia; Cyprus; Lausanne Treaty; millet system; Young Turks Turkish language, 8, 14, 19, 34, 56, 111, 113, 138, 296 Turkish schools in Greece, 222 tutors, 49, 111, 115, 151, 159, 220–22 tyros, 79 Tziambiri, Olympia, 466n56 Tzizinikas, Patroclos, 236

Index 507 Union Hall, 130, 133 United Kingdom, 353 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 287 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 257, 261, 267, 277 United States, 105, 172, 330, 362, 430n29; Greece and, xx, 295–98, 330, 332, 334, 340, 350, 359–62, 376, 403, 445n24; higher studies/undergraduate study in, 352–54; Turkey and, 23, 71; World War II and, 256–58. See also under specific events; specific topics, e.g., Anatolia College, faculty and staff; postgraduate study United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 299, 306, 317, 360, 372–75, 387–88, 391, 401, 467n58 United States Civil War, 32, 64 United States Consulate: in Greece, 184, 248, 250, 297, 338, 346, 370; in Turkey, 40 United States Information Service (USIS), 297, 362, 372 United States Legation (in Constantinople), 57, 71, 80–81, 83, 85, 92, 432n55 university counseling, 352–54 university-level education, 382–402 University of Thessaloniki. See Thessaloniki, University of UNRRA. See United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Urfa, Turkey, 24 USAID. See United States Agency for International Development USIS. See United States Information Service Vafiades, Markos, 269 Vafopoulou, Anastasia Yerakopoulou, 297, 370 Vakalopoulos, Apostolos, 282 Valavanis (teacher), 98 “Vali,” 437n13 Varkiza Agreement, 268 Vasilikos, Vasilis, 305 Venizelos, Eleftherios, 176, 181, 190–91 Veranda (Tracy), 418n68 Veroia (Berea), Greece, 177 Versailles Treaty, 164, 170 vice president of Anatolia, office of, 314–15, 349

village welfare projects, 286–89 Vlachos, Panos, Anatolia’s twelfth president, 390, 404, 407 vocational guidance, 199, 352–54 Vodena (later Edessa), Greece, 175, 200 Vouloni, Olga, 375 Vouloni, Panayiota “Titika,” 352 Voulouvoutis, Nicholas, 377 Vourdas, George, 220, 270 Waldheim, Kurt, 252 Walker, Thomas, 460n27 Ward, Mary A., 119 Washburn, Frances, 35 West, Maria A., 29, 35, 416n51, 421n36 “Western Asia Mission,” 5 Western Turkey Mission, xvi, 33, 53, 66, 89, 104, 106, 121–22, 130, 133, 416n57, 417n65, 418n69; and Anatolia’s founding, 37–38, 42–44; and Anatolia’s relocation to Greece, 185, 188, 193–94; Bible House headquarters in Constantinople, 2, 30, 52; educational commission established by, 108; and Girls School, supervision of, 223; objective of, 30 Westervelt, W. D., 236 Westervelt (Caroline) House, 236, 244, 249 Weter, Winifred, 370 White, Elsie Hoesley, 218, 229, 236 White, Esther Robbins, 56, 63, 90, 96, 153, 155–56, 169, 176, 185, 194, 209, 214–15, 227, 229–32, 238 White, George D., 205, 218, 230, 236, 238, 276 White, George E., 56, 61, 63, 84, 99–100, 110, 113–15, 135, 230–32, 307, 417n63, 426n68, 426n72, 432n50, 433n61, 435n2, 438n21, 439n32, 440n48, 450n60; Adventuring with Anatolia College, 232; background of, 67, 138, 231; character and qualities of, 138–39, 188–89, 198, 209, 214–15, 230–32; and Christian-Muslim relations, 122–23, 139; and Compton, 215, 450n59; as dean, 106, 110–11, 114, 138; ecumenical outlook of, 139, 198; as Educational Commission president, 108, 114; fundraising/cultivating support, 196–97, 208–10, 226–32, 272; as missionary, 30, 231, 450n60; as an NER director, 153, 156; retirement of/

508

Index

as President Emeritus, 232–34, 238–40; strategic goals of, 204–5, 227, 233, 240; as third president of Anatolia (in Turkey), 123, 125, 129–30, 132–33, 138–40, 143–45, 147–49, 153–63, 165–66, 169–70, 174–77, 405; as third president of Anatolia (relocated to Greece), xvii, 175–76, 180, 182–98, 200–201, 204–5, 207–10, 215, 218–19, 224–34, 237–38, 307, 406; Tracy and, 54, 138, 154, 198, 208; vision for Anatolia, 129, 154–55, 233 White, George Hills, 133 White, Margaret, 67 White, Paul Dudley, 300 White Hall, 285, 302, 348, 406 White House, 239, 244, 249, 259–60, 262, 276–78, 302 White Mountain. See Ak Dagh White Tower, 203 Wickes, Mary and Carrie, 59, 432n47 Wickes Industrial Self-Help Department, 114 Wiley, Walter B., 159, 198–99 Willard, Charlotte, 64, 90–91, 96, 117, 119, 145–53, 156–58, 168–69, 174, 224; after WWI, 192–94, 198–99; character of, 91, 150; rescuing Anatolia girls, 145–46, 150–51, 405, 438n22 Willard House, 276, 325, 403 Williams, George St. John, 168–69, 205 Williams (Arthur Ashley) Foundation, 302 Williams College, 3, 35, 54–56, 56, 383 Williams laboratory, 302–3 Willis, David, 313, 317, 328 Wilson, Hazel T., 273 Wilson, Woodrow, 155, 160, 164 Wingate, Henry K., 56 women, 223; education of girls/women in Turkey, 35, 37, 63, 421n36; in missionary life, 63–67, 90, 119; in Ottoman society, 14, 63 Women’s Board of Missions, 117, 119, 135, 223 women’s mission associations, 64–65 Wood, George W., 25 Woodhead, Jean, 352 “Workshops of Free Studies,” 213, 384, 386–87, 392–93

World War I, 54, 70, 95, 97, 102, 119, 127, 137–78, 181, 189, 200, 204, 208, 218, 222, 232–33, 247, 295, 405, 442n68; Anatolia reopened after, 158–59; Turkey’s defeat in, xvi–xvii, 138 World War II, xviii, 126, 178, 213, 215, 220, 224, 235, 240, 244–45, 247–60, 320, 334, 346, 360; invasion and occupation of Greece, 245, 250–60 Wright, Mary P., 35, 62, 90 Wright, Richard, 240 Wrye, Kenneth J., 339 Xanthi, 264, 346 Xenidis, Ioannes P., 56, 107, 111, 117, 125, 143, 146, 228 Xifilidou, Maria, 467n66 yearbook. See Anatolian, The Yementzis, George, 207, 217, 286, 370 Yerakopoulou-Vafopoulou, Anastasia, 297 Yermanos, Dimitris, 243 Yfantides, Andreas, 124 YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association). See Young Men’s Christian Association Yoakimides, Achilles, 124 Young, William, 390 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 108, 115, 148, 159, 183, 189, 217, 234, 239, 243, 269, 297, 304 “Young Turks,” 105, 108, 120–21, 127, 137, 161 Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), 90, 145, 149, 151, 243, 266 Yugoslavia, xviii, 250, 268–69, 373 Zannas, Dimitris, 216, 255, 290, 350, 370, 453n20 Zbinden, Emma, 148–51, 150, 153, 156–57, 192 Zelveyan, Aram K., 169 Zembiljizada, Nedim, 95 Zhamgochian, Tateos M., 167 Zika, Maria, 283 Zinjidere, Turkey, 208, 218 Zobian, Lusaper, 120 Zolotas, Costas, 342