Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 7, 1993 TAG: 9305070607
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It is safe to say that no one played a greater part in Washington and Lee's development except Robert E. Lee, and both, it is worth noting, made academic broadening and deepening their central concern, not football, fund-raising or the construction of a new buildings.
Leyburn, who lived to the ripe old age of 91, died in a hospital in Maryland not far from the family farm to which he retired upon leaving the college. But he remained actively interested in W&L affairs, for years was a frequent visitor to Lexington and was the principal speaker when the Stonewall Jackson House opened there a few years ago.
Though not a native of Lexington, he was the descendant of one of its distinguished families. His father, a Presbyterian minister of some renown, may well have set the stamp on his son's life, for James G. Leyburn, like so many of his own and his parents' generation, was the proverbial Scotch-Irish figure, diligent, regular, utterly dependable, invincibly committed to the old doctrine of "high thinking and plain living."
The W&L campus and the residents of Lexington could have set their clocks to his daily habits, and no one who dealt with him ever complained that he had failed to do what he'd said he'd do.
He was educated at Duke, Princeton and Yale, from which he received his doctorate; and it was at Yale - except for time off to do government service during World War II - that he spent most of his early teaching career. But he left Yale in 1947 to assume the deanship at W&L, and it was at W&L that he had his largest academic influence.
It is perhaps too much to say that Washington and Lee, when he came to it, was a sleepy little rural college. But it was less demanding of its students and faculty than it soon became, and the change was essentially the consequence of what came to be called "the Leyburn plan."
"The Leyburn plan" was a shift in college emphasis to a broad curriculum that required an undergraduate to take courses in a range of areas and to show at least minimal competence in each. Leyburn himself was hardly a doctrinarire scholar, but he believed anyone boasting a bachelor's degree ought to be familiar with the principal bodies of knowledge.
That cultural breadth, not especially popular these days in academic circles, where specialization has become a national hazard, asked more of students than they were accustomed in 1947 to giving. It also asked a lot of W&L professors, many of whom resented Leyburn's faith in academic breadth and his insistence that faculty members ought to work at a level at least as high as the level he demanded of students.
"The Leyburn plan" transformed Washington and Lee, in any case, and much of the stature it now can claim as a national institution arises from the fact that James G. Leyburn called it to a standard of scholarship that matched in spirit, if it could not wholly match in detail, the standards of America's finest universities.
It remains to say that Leyburn himself, though leading a life that was almost monastically concentrated, was a polymath - a "Renaissance man" in the language today applied to athletes who can read without moving their lips. He was a classical pianist who practiced daily and gave superb concerts. His acquaintanceships with students and alumni were immense. His final lecture of the academic year, on the death of Socrates, was the university's most famous. His courtesy to fellow faculty members was unfailing, his notes of congratulation or condolence permanent keepsakes.
Washington and Lee will not see his kind again, nor is any college in today's competitive atmosphere likely to. And his mark will remain.
Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB