Seventy Years Of The Worcester Polytechnic Institute: Prologue

BEFORE WE BEGIN

CRITICAL readers of this chronicle should be disarmed early, for it will not take them long to realize that it is not the work of a formal historian. It is merely a conscientious attempt to record the procession of events and the activities of people that have gone into making this college, and to produce the story before memories of the early years have become too dim. Others who have had longer and more intimate contacts with the scene could have described it better. That they have not done so is a partial excuse for this attempt.

It has been impossible to dispense with those portions relating to changes in personnel that read like the "begats" of the Old Testament. The part that each has played is recorded in a biographical appendix, even if it is not adequately described in the main story. It has been difficult to avoid the injection of appraisals and opinions about actors in the scene, some of which necessarily are based on hearsay evidence. If any statement seems unjust it is not so by intent, for sincere efforts have been made to weigh conflicting opinions.

Every historian owes many debts, few of which can be acknowledged in a foreword. Thanks are due to the conscientiousness of trustee and faculty secretaries, to D. Waldo Lincoln, Daniel Merriman, and others who preserved original documents and letters, and to George E. Gladwin and Zelotes W. Coombs, who kept voluminous scrapbooks covering

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Last Modified: Fri Jul 30 11:15:25 EDT 1999