Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 25, 2003|Volume 31, Number 27

Richard B. Sewall

Richard Sewall dies, was first
master of Ezra Stiles College

Long-time Yale professor Richard B. Sewall, the first master of Ezra Stiles College, died on April 16 at his home in Newton, Massachusetts at the age of 95.

Professor Sewall was a noted member of Yale's English department and the author of two works that have become classics in their fields -- "The Life of Emily Dickinson" and "The Vision of Tragedy." As master of Ezra Stiles, he headed the most recently built of Yale's residential colleges.

From the time he began teaching at Yale in 1934 to his retirement 42 years later, Professor Sewall was among the most popular faculty members. For many years he packed Yale's largest lecture hall with students, auditors and visitors to his class "English 61," an innovative course on tragedy that he devised during World War II and taught until he retired in 1976.

His "Daily Theme" class was a training ground for young writers, boasting William F. Buckley and Bob Woodward among its notable alumni. Buckley has attributed his ability to write on deadline to lessons he learned in "Daily Theme."

Gaddis Smith, formerly a student in the class, now the Larned Professor Emeritus of History, recalls that Professor Sewall was "one of the greatest Yale teachers of all time."

During the Vietnam War years, Yale seniors dedicated their class yearbook to Professor Sewall two years running. Woodward, who edited the book in 1966, told Professor Sewall that he received the dedication because he was so sensitive to the needs of students.

Indeed, the respect and affection that Professor Sewall garnered from his students was as legendary as his wry sense of humor. When in the early 1950s he was drafted by Yale President Whitney Griswold to head the Committee on Manners and Morals, he famously replied:

"I have never had any manners, and my morals are slipping badly. But I'll try to bluff it through."

In 1959, Professor Sewall was appointed master of Ezra Stiles, which was completed three years later, in 1962. Designed by architect Eero Saarinen, Stiles is one of 12 separate complexes within Yale College where undergraduates live and dine together. Along with its neighbor Samuel Morse, it was built to accommodate a growing student population that was soon to include women.

Professor Sewall made a bold statement as master by inviting three Yale faculty members and a noted peace activist who played defining roles in the 1960s to become fellows of the college: Charles Reich, who wrote the best-seller "The Greening of America"; Erich Segal, author of "Love Story"; the Reverend William Sloan Coffin, who was a leader of the anti-war movement; and Allard Lowenstein, who initiated the drive to oust President Lyndon Johnson from office.

Professor Sewall also was instrumental in heading off the violence threatened by the Bobby Seale trial in New Haven in 1969. Joining with other faculty members, he helped to convince Yale President Kingman Brewster to take a conciliatory rather than rigid approach to the unrest on campus and throughout the town.

Recalling Professor Sewall's 11-year stewardship of Stiles, a subsequent master of the college, Traugott Lawler comments, "He established a tradition here of community spirit that has never been lost."

Richard Sewall was born in Albany, New York in 1908 to a family with a deep theological tradition. His father, the Reverend Charles G. Sewall, was 13th in an unbroken chain of Congregationalist ministers dating to the 17th century, and his mother, Kate Strong Sewall, was the daughter of the Reverend Augustus Hopkins Strong, who had served as pastor to John D. Rockefeller and was founder of The Rochester Theological Seminary in New York. He attended Philips Exeter, graduated from Williams College and received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1933. Previous to Yale, he taught at Clark University.

Although he is most associated as a scholar with his biography of Dickinson, which received the National Book Award when it was first published in 1974, and his definitive study of tragedy, Professor Sewall also published widely on such disparate subjects as the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on 18th-century English writers, the works of Dostoyevski, and the fiction of Stephen Crane.

Professor Sewall is survived by three sons and two daughters-in-law: Stephen and Joy Sewall of Glenview, Illinois, Richard and Emily McDermott Sewall of Newton, Massachusetts, and David, of Woodbury, Connecticut; and by six grandchildren, Ethan, Alexandra, Eric, Michaela and Samuel and Joseph.

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