Date of birth:
May 18, 1918
Place
of birth:
New York City
Profession:
Educator
Student
1940-41
1941-42
Staff
1942 fall/spring
INTERNAL LINKS
Alexander Eliot
Sunley Manuscript
EXTERNAL LINKS
Governance at Goddard:
A Brief History by Wilfrid Hamlin - June 1993
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 In 1936, on graduation from Northampton High School in Massachusetts, Will
Hamlin remained for a second "postgraduate" year both to save money for
college – it was the Great Depression – and to take some additional
courses. He had heard about Black Mountain in high school from Alexander
Eliot, whose father taught drama at Smith and who had entered Black Mountain
in the fall of 1936. But it was former Antioch students, friends of Will's
mother, who persuaded him to apply to their alma mater.
At the end of Hamlin's third year at Antioch, he felt he had mastered "what
Antioch had to offer." Black Mountain College was a frequently
discussed alternative to Antioch, and WIll and a friend hitchhiked to take
a look at the school. Earlier, on a visit to the Tennessee Valley Authority
with fellow
Antioch students, he and his fellow students had stayed overnight at Black Mountain College.
He already knew one Black Mountain student, Betty Brett, whose brother was at
Antioch. After that visit, Will thought he might like to "try out" Black
Mountain. His mother’s
gave her permission, and he enrolled in the fall of 1940. It was his
intention to spend a year at Black Mountain and then to return to Antioch
to graduate. He registered at Antioch in the fall of 1941 but was soon on
the Southern Railway heading back to Black Mountain, where his friends
greeted him with, "We knew you'd come back!"
At first Will was primarily interested in theater. The French teacher at
Antioch had encouraged his interest in cinema, and he participated in the
theater program where "the emphasis [had] been on a kind of
baby Broadway." There he learned "technical things about theater."
He recalled that at Black Mountain "[they] had no theater equipment." Despite
this presumed handicap, Will discovered in his courses with Robert Wunsch
"a wholly different view of how theater could be taught." He compared Wunsch’s teaching style to method acting, "In the sense of trying to find
out who this character you’re acting is and what he was doing before he
came on stage and what kind of life has he has had, and what he’s bringing
with him in the invisible baggage people always carry with them." He had a
role in Molière’s The Physician in Spite of Himself and played the
male lead in Shadow and Substance.
Besides Wunsch's drama courses, Will took a general curriculum including Elsa Kahl’s Movement for Actors, literature with Kenneth Kurtz and Fred Mangold,
and Psychology of the Human World with Erwin Straus. He had always been
interested in photography and, inspired by the college’s first picture
bulletin, for which John Stix made most of the photographs, he became one
of Black Mountain’s student photographers. Fritz Hansgirg, who taught
chemistry at Black Mountain, was classified as an "enemy alien" and
therefore could not use his cameras – a Speed Graphic, a 4 x 5 format
camera and a Leica with a complete set of lenses. He generously made
them available to the student photographers.
For his work program at Black Mountain, Will helped with college publicity
and printed publications, including newsletters, concert and drama
programs, and an announcement for an exhibition of hardware jewelry by
Anni Albers. He remained at the college for the fall of 1942 as a member
of the staff to help with college publicity. He recalls that he left in
March.
Will received a draft rating of 4-F, which exempted him from service. When
he left Black Mountain, he did editorial work for the newly founded Bantam
Books in New York and also edited a newsletter for civilian employees of
the Air Technical Service Command. He worked as an
aptitude tester and interpreter for the Johnson O’Connor organization. Will’s primary interest, however, was in
teaching. Having attended both the Horace Mann School and the Dalton
School in New York and a progressive high school in Masschusetts,
conventional schools did not interest him. He applied to several institutions including Goddard
College. In his first response, Royce Pitkin, President of Goddard, stated
that unfortunately they had just filled the position. Soon thereafter,
Will received a phone call from Pitkin. The other applicant could not
accept, and the position was open. From 1948 until his retirement he taught
literature, psychology and education at Goddard. He obtained his Ph. D.
degree from Union Graduate School.
On June 11, 1944, Will married Betty Brett, the Black Mountain student
whose brother he had known at Antioch. Betty Hamlin died in 1968 of
pulmonary fibrosis. Their son Christopher Hamlin is a science historian
and author of A Science of Impurity (1990) and Public Health and
Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick (1998).
A second marriage to Alice Blachly ended in divorce, although they remain
friends.
Revised September 22, 2004 |
