Harold Clark Martin, the 14th President of the College from 1965 to 1974, died on Monday, May 2, at the age of 88.
“Harold Martin served this College with distinction,” said Roger H. Hull, president of the College. “He led the College through a number of milestones including curriculum revision, student unrest during the Vietnam War, the admission of women and the construction of a number of buildings. We are better today because of his leadership.”
Born in Raymond, Pa., he graduated high school in the depths of the Depression but worked his way through Hartwick College, where he earned a B.A. in 1937.
He taught high school English in Adams, N.Y., and took summer graduate courses in English Renaissance studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 1939 he married another Michigan student, Elma Hicks of Webster Springs, W.V., and returned to his high school in Goshen, N.Y., to teach English and then serve as principal.
Exempted from the draft because he was a high school principal and father, he enlisted in the Navy late in World War II to serve a year as instructor in English at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Bainbridge, Md. After his discharge, he returned to Goshen and pursued full certification through courses in education at Columbia and then at Harvard.
Shortly after Martin's arrival at Union in 1965, “Hal” as he was called, oversaw the adoption of the current trimester calendar and a revised curriculum, “CompEd,” which required all students to take courses in both of the newly organized academic “centers” – Humanities & Social Sciences, and Sciences & Engineering.
He also urged a re-thinking of Union's mission, arguing that a number of trends, including the rapid rise to prominence of public institutions in the Northeast, imperiled traditional liberal arts colleges like Union.
The most drastic proposal of his tenure, initiated by the faculty, called for reconsideration of the policy which, since 1795, had restricted enrollment to men only. In 1968, Martin appointed a committee to study the question of adopting coeducation. When the committee unanimously endorsed coeducation, the faculty voted in the affirmative without audible dissent, and the trustees nearly so. The first full-time women students entered in 1970.
At the height of student activism, Martin joined with 34 other college presidents in signing a letter to President Richard Nixon urging attention to student voices.
During Martin's tenure, Union added a number of buildings including Humanities, Social Sciences, Fox, Davidson and Achilles Rink (now Achilles Center).
After Union, Martin became president of the American Academy in Rome, a position he resigned in 1976. After a year as Martha Bundy Scott Professor of English at Williams, he joined the faculty of Trinity College. He retired from Trinity as Charles A. Dana Professor of Humanities in 1982.
In retirement, the Martins returned to their farm on the outskirts of Rensselaerville, N.Y. He completed two books of Episcopal history, St. George's Church: Spanning Three Centuries (1984) and “Outlasting Marble and Brass”: the History of the Church Pension Fund (1986).
In 1988 the Martins moved to Corrales, New Mexico, where Elma Hicks Martin died February 26, 1995. Harold Martin subsequently moved to Maine.
Martin last year published his edited two-volume Diary of Jonathan Pearson, and wrote three articles for the Encyclopedia of Union College History published in 2003. He attended Homecoming last fall to do a book signing for the Pearson book. He also participated in the processional at Commencement 2004.
[Some above material from Wayne Somers, compiler and editor, Encyclopedia of Union College History (Schenectady: Union College Press, 2003), page 472.]