After tending to Harvard freshmen for two decades and to a painful back injury for five years, F. Skiddy von Stade Jr. '38, dean of freshmen and Mather House master, has decided to retire at age 60 to his vacation home in a small town in southern New Hampshire.

Von Stade's departure at the end of the academic year will close a 35-year Harvard career that began in the early 30s with von Stade's arrival as a polo-playing freshman straight out of St. Paul's, the son of a famed horseman and grandson of a lawyer for financier J.P. Morgan.

In 1940 von Stade joined the Harvard administration, first as assistant dean of the College for the junior and senior classes, then as director of scholarships and finally--beginning in 1952--as freshman dean.

Mather House began its search for a new master this week.

Among candidates currently under consideration by the House Committee and Senior Common Room are John S. Harwell, director of the Harvard Student Employment Office and Mather senior tutor, and Warren E.C. Wacker, director of the University Health Services and acting master of Kirkland House.

Von Stade laid his decision to retire six years before reaching the official University retirement age to a slipped disc, which has required two operations since he first suffered it in 1970. The back injury forced him into Stillman Infirmary last spring for several weeks, almost required a third operation then, and has bothered von Stade all fall.

But von Stade also spoke this week of a general desire to escape the pressured life of Cambridge, to avoid the "hassles" and deadlines his two jobs present, to recognize that "what used to be fun" has become a little more tedious. He has, as he wrote in a letter to Mather House residents, "been feeling that I was running out of gas and simply cannot do justice to either job."