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Remembering Homer
Editor's Note We received the following email message last December. As we prepare to rededicate the Babbidge Library on October 18, this seemed like a good time to share an edited version of it with our readers.
Mr. Kobulnicky,
I was interested in your thoughts in the "Returning to Special Places" column in the UConn Libraries newsletter I just received [September/October 1997]. Your interest in making the [new] Babbidge Library a welcoming place, user-oriented and friendly is laudable. My suggestion would be that you use the man himself as a model,and you cannot go wrong.
My connection with Homer Babbidge started as an undergraduate, and continued until his death. I knew him at Storrs, then Yale, then the Hartford Graduate Center, as president, master of Timothy Dwight College, gubernatorial candidate, and finally head of HGC. I am probably one of the many, many people who considered him a friend, who would claim a special, personal relationship with hi that began at Storrs and lasted until the end.
You have probably seen and heard and read much about this remarkable man. But I would say that it was his openness to students, in particular, his genuine intellectual and personal curiosity about people and their interests, which fascinated me in my dealings with and observations of him.
He was a renaissance man, the historian and teacher who liked to drink and socialize with bright, interesting people, whatever their ages or ranks in the university hierarchy. Perhaps because he became university president so young, he was not suspicious of young people, but rather seemed to hold a particular fascination for them and their activities. At the time when campuses all over the country were wrenched apart by strife over the war, student and civil rights, placement/recruitment/military conflicts, Storrs did not break apart largely due to his steady hand, his kind and generous nature, and his willingness to talk directly with everyone rather than relying on intermediaries to represent him.
So what does this all have to do with your desire to reshape the huge institution? I believe an understanding of what made Homer so special to so many would be a wonderful model for you to follow as you decide how the place should work. It won't be easy, but it can be done. Think of what [Homer would] want if he were still around, and you can't go wrong. And make it personal-it's Homer's building, after all, it reflect his personality, spirit, wit and depth of intellect and be proud of it! If he could answer your question himself, I think that's what he'd suggest, just make the place inviting and efficient, productive but kind, and you can't go wrong.
Good luck!
Wes Slate, Class of '72
December 2, 1997
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