He and I went down South in the ‘60s to help build churches together that had been burnt down. We were living with black families and living on a black campus together. And his advice to students was a simple one — be as open as you can possibly be, do not be judgmental. When Bob and I were down and worked in the South to help rebuild black churches that had been burnt out we always came back with a message or a colloquium about those experiences, Bob talking about its social impact and what this might mean in terms of class and ethnic structure, I talking more about what this meant spiritually, emotionally to the people who were members of these churches who had been burnt out. Bob and I would hold sway, talking about experiences which were, again, outside the classroom. I mean stuff that you would never, ever do at Williams College. He felt that those things were really important because you began to see the problems that people face and what it was like to live. And back to that question, “What to do?”

John Eusden,
Former Chaplain