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From:
Lisa Monahan
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Saturday, October 1, 2016
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Jack was my uncle and a favorite one at that! I will always remember the summer he took me, my brother Carl, and Paul & Steve to Monhegan Isalnd in Maine. I was 9 years old. I felt very special to have been invited to go. Every morning (early) Jack came into our cabin singing, "it's time to get up, it's time to get up, it's time to get up in the morning!" That song has stayed with me ever since. That summer I ate my first lobster, after watching them crawl around in the bathtub, and ate many banana splits. Jack also taught us how to play bridge! It wasn't until I was a young adult when I realized that bridge is really an adult game :) Thank you Uncle Jack for these cherished memories. xx
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From:
Fran Conroy
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Friday, September 30, 2016
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In October 1965 I was a senior at Punahou School in Hawai'i when I heard that the president of Haverford Hugh Borton was to be in Honolulu (he was a historian, specializing in Japan and the Pacific, my potential fields). He easily talked me into coming. But when I arrived, I realized it was his last year. My roommate David Cross joined a student-faculty committee to choose a new president. They chose John R. Coleman, with considerable enthusiasm. I was curious about the enthusiasm. I found out almost immediately. As a rising editor for the Haverford News, I was able to observe closely this dynamic young leader. (I still have the Coleman Inauguration issue of the News.) Although he had no special interest like Hugh Borton in Asia, he was perfectly suited for the other aspect that drew me to Haverford: its tradition of conscientious, nonviolent activism. During coming years, he would lead a Haverford I believed in. Throughout 1968 I would meet privately with him weekly as News editor-in-chief. Avoiding the campus strife of most other places, he would lead 600 of us to Washington in May 1970 to visit Congresspeople in opposition to the invasion of Cambodia. As I graduated later that month, the womb of Jack Coleman's Haverford during tumultuous times made me very grateful--and a bit of a misfit for the world to come.
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From:
Rick Coleman
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Friday, September 23, 2016
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In 1973 I was still undecided about my college choice when I interviewed with Bill Ambler, Haverford’s director of admission. Afterward he said there was someone else who wanted to meet me. To my utter amazement that person was the college’s president, Jack Coleman! Jack had taken the effort to read my application and to note that we shared the same last name. By the end of our 45-minute conversation I was firmly convinced that I should attend Haverford – any place that was worthy of Jack’s attention was the place to be.
Jack graciously acted as my academic adviser for the next four years. I majored in economics and enjoyed each of Jack’s courses and seminars. It is extremely rare and fortunate to encounter someone who possesses a blend of intellect, wisdom, compassion, kindness and generosity the way Jack did. A better mentor and role model than Jack is hard to imagine. I am very lucky to be among the many who were the beneficiaries of Jack’s time, care and friendship. In the graduate school recommendation that Jack wrote for me he said that even though we were not related he wished that we might have been. I have cherished that sentiment ever since and still echo it wholeheartedly. Thanks for everything, Jack.
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From:
Scott McGregor
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Tuesday, September 20, 2016
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I had Jack as my economics professor at Haverford in my freshman year. Towards the end of the year the campus food service contact was up for renewal. I thought the food was subpar, and I was advocating we drop them and choose a competing service. Jack spent some time with me to help me understand that simply not renewing the contract would not improve anything with them, and there would be no incentive for the new service to be any better between contract deadlines. He helped me see that by engaging with them collaboratively rather than summarily dumping them was more likely to get the improvements we both wanted.
Jack was right, and I learned a lesson in favor of constructive engagement and collaboration that has been a major direction for the 40+ years of my life since then.
I am glad I got to know Jack in many ways, as our college president, a treasured professor, and simply as a human being.
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From:
Ron Jenkins
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Tuesday, September 20, 2016
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I had dropped out of college and was working as a clown and juggler in a small tent circus when I read an article about Jack Coleman taking a sabbatical to work as a garbage collector. It made me think that the college where he was president might be receptive to a dropout who was taking a sabbatical in the circus. So I applied and ended up spending more time talking to Jack than I have ever spent talking to the President of the university where I know teach. He hosted our clown shows at his home and he remains one of the heroes who has inspired me throughout my career.
Ron Jenkins - '76
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From:
Emil Bonaduce
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Monday, September 19, 2016
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I entered Haverford in the same year that Jack started as President of the College. As a 17 year old in a Freshman beanie, I had no idea that this gentleman welcoming us would have such an amazing influence on all of our lives, especially the Class of '71. I went to see him one time to complain about having to buy 3 meals a day from the campus food service provider, Aramark. I skipped breakfast and thought a 2 meal a day plan would save money. He explained that that was the deal with Aramark, and I thought he was co-opting me when he said that I should look into a future in Operations Research. I had no idea what Operations Research was.
It was only about 10 years later that my remembrance of this meeting occurred to me. And it was about 5 years after I had gotten a Masters Degree from Rutgers. You guessed it, in Operations Research!
I could go on, but it’s just so serendipitous that Jack and Haverford College had the profoundest influence on my life.
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From:
Neal Koch
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Friday, September 16, 2016
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During a Class Night skit in Roberts Hall one year, Jack quietly emerged from behind the backdrop curtain to cross the stage, partly bent-over and wearing a janitor's gray, zip-up work suit, as he pushed a large, industrial-sized gray mop of a dust broom across the stage, until he wordlessly left the other side of the stage and the room. Later during the production, I wandered upstairs in Roberts to the area outside Jack's office, which was empty, except for Jack, who was hanging around by himself, still in his janitor's uniform, smoking. During our chat, he told me, in between drags on his cigarette, that since returning to Haverford from his much-publicized blue-collar sabbatical, he had been working nights as a janitor elsewhere. One of his sons later confirmed this to me. The suit Jack wore on stage was, apparently, not a costume. Elite, prestigious Main Line liberal arts college president by day, janitor by night.
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From:
Douglas Johnson
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Friday, September 16, 2016
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Jack Coleman was an honorary member of our class of 1971. It was not just because we all arrived at Haverford in the same year, it was what he did when we arrived. During customs week we had nightly meetings in the auditorium of Roberts Hall. The first night we were introduced to the class beanie and told that we had to wear them all the time - especially at meals (then in Founders) if we wanted to get fed. We later had to wear them as we trooped through town to Bryn Mawr for our first Freshman mixer, a blow to our masculine pride. The other thing about the beanies was that the resident jocks (yes, Haverford had a few jocks back then) would try to steal them. This was given the perverse explanation that it would generate class solidarity, as we should band together to protect our beanies from the thieving hands of the jocks. This being 1967 it did not go down well with most of us. It was too much like 1950s frat house hazing, and one of the reasons we had come to Haverford was that it had no fraternities. On the night after we were issued our beanies Jack came to address us, his first Freshman class as president. “This is my proudest possession”, he began, as he pulled from his pocket a ’71 beanie and put it on. Loud cheers from all of us, and we were his from that moment. We were the last class to have beanies inflicted on us, but Jack showed up wearing his when he joined the chorus line in our senior year Class Night production (a tradition now sadly lost). When I asked Jack at this alumni weekend awards ceremony if he had kept his beanie he just smiled and nodded.
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