It was a Tuesday morning in the fall of 1939 when five-year-old John H. McArthur of Burnaby, British Columbia, walked into his first grade classroom for the first time.

A few hours later, Canada entered World War II, and McArthur and his classmates were sent home from school.

The memory of that day--and of the sense of bewilderment at the world and the powerlessness over the future that accompanied it--left a lasting impression on the young boy who exactly 40 years later would be named dean of the Harvard Business School.

"If I had been born just a few years earlier, I could have ended up fighting in that war. I might have died or had a leg blown off," says McArthur, now 59.

But he didn't. Too young for World War II and too old for Vietnam, McArthur was lucky. In fact, luck--in the sense of being in the right place at the right time--has played a defining role in the life of John McArthur.

Since that autumn morning more than half a century ago, little in McArthur's life has been planned. Had it been, it is unlikely the former schoolboy from Canada would today enjoy the understated elegance of the first floor corner office of the Business School's Morgan Hall.

From that office, McArthur plays a critical, if often behind-the-scenes role on campus, exercising what observers say is the power to determine the success or failure of the University's upcoming $2 billion capital campaign and President Neil L. Rudenstine's efforts at increased Interfaculty cooperation.

Growing up in the 1930s and 1940s in a small town on the outskirts of Vancouver, the three McArthur children did not know luxury. Their father worked as a grain inspector for the Canadian government. Their mother stayed home to raise the family.

John, the oldest child, spent his weekends and vacations from high school working in a local sawmill, where he hoped to gain full time employment after his graduation. But luck wouldn't allow it.

"Between grade 12 and grade 13, one of the family members in the family that owned this place called me in and talked to me about going to university, which I hadn't thought about doing," McArthur recalls.

Reclusive playing a crucial part in the fate of the capital campaign

McArthur says he didn't take the offer seriously until several months later. It was then, on the day after Christmas, that his boss--a Jewish immigrant who had fled the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia--came around to the McArthur home with gifts for the holidays.

"The guy came to the front door and my father came out with me and he wouldn't come in and he said, 'Has John talked to you about our conversation in August about going to university?'" McArthur recalls. "And my father said, 'The boy never talks to me about anything.'"

McArthur enrolled at the University of British Columbia, where he majored in forestry and where, following the completion of his junior year, he married his eighth grade sweetheart.

"The two of us went in to see the dean of this place and I said, 'I've got a big problem, because my wife isn't interested in the Queen Charlotte Islands or the Yukon, or anywhere where there'd be logging," McArthur says. "[The dean] used to call himself 'we,' and he said, 'We think you should go to Harvard Business School,' which I didn't know about at all."

McArthur applied and was admitted to the Stanford, Wharton, MIT and Harvard business schools. He says he ruled out Stanford because he had grown up on the West Coast and felt it was time to explore a new place, and he ruled out Wharton because no one in British Columbia had heard of it.

The choice between MIT and Harvard, though, was tougher. Together with his wife, the future dean boarded a train and made the five day trip to Boston without knowing which of the two schools he would attend.

"MIT had offered us student housing, so we got a cab and he took us all over hell's half-acre and finally ended up at MIT, and we're in front of this army barracks from World War II," he says. "My wife said, 'No way, lose. We're not going to live in that.'"

Resigned to spend at least one night in the converted MIT army barracks, the couple dropped off their baggage and went for an evening stroll along the banks of the Charles River.

They wound up walking all the way to Harvard.

"We got to the footbridge, and the sun was going down over the stadium, and it was so beautiful," he recalls. "We had this image at that point--MIT was this army barracks and Harvard was this beautiful Georgian campus. Pretty much on that footbridge, we decided to come here."

From that day in 1957 on, McArthur remained at Harvard, joining the faculty shortly after his graduation in 1959, and rising through the ranks until he was awarded an endowed chair in 1973.

Six years later, on Halloween day of 1979, then Harvard President Derek C. Bok asked McArthur whether he was interested in becoming dean.

By January 1, 1980, the lucky, hardworking son of a grain inspector had moved into his new office.

Today, halfway through his 13th year as dean, McArthur is at the height of his professional career, far removed from the Vancouver sawmill where he got his start.

Entering the lobby of the Business School's newly renovated Morgan Hall, where the dean has his spacious office, visitors are greeted by a rare 2,000-year-old tile floor mosaic imported from ancient Syria.

Four secretaries occupy McArthur's outer office. Inside, where the dean works at a large conference table, colorful paintings by Alexander Calder brighten the walls.

Leaning back comfortably in an elegant, white, upholstered armchair, McArthur reflects modestly on his accomplishments and his impact on the Business School.

"Deans get plenty of recognition without seeking it," he says. "We've got lots of great people and I work hard with many others to attract more than our fair share...I think when we're outstanding is when we work together."

But many of McArthur's Harvard colleagues and students are less restrained in their evaluations of his work.

"He has done a really first rate job in managing a very complicated institution, filled with very successful people," says Harvey V. Fineberg '67, dean of the School of Public Health and a close friend of McArthur. "From a personal point of view, he could not have been a better friend."

"His tenure saw [the Business School] continue its preeminence," says Gary G. Mueller '88, a first-year student at the school and news editor of its student newspaper. "He has great faculty here and part of attracting good faculty is the dean's responsibility."

McArthur's fans and friends speak of the continued excellence of the Business School's faculty and teaching programs under his leadership. Pointing to the recently undertaken comprehensive review of the school's flagship MBA program, they say the dean is on the cutting edge of advances in business education.

"He anticipates large-scale trends and gets the school out in front of them," says Provost Jerry R. Green. "Dean McArthur feels that business education is going to change because of changes in technology and because of changes in the business world...and he's kind of planning ahead of those changes."

McArthur--who talks of the Business School alternately as a "community" and a "family" also wins praise for his relationship with the school's students and, especially its faculty Walking around the carefully man icured campus, the dean greets many passers by by their first names, often asking about specific details of their lives.

"He's almost like a parent to the faculty," says Green. "He knows everybody personally. He knows everything about their lives."

"It's a very lean administration," Green adds. "The entire thing is faculty-run and he has a way of moving people from the chairmanship of this to the chairmanship of that and after a while they know the whole school. That gives the place a real tight feeling from the faculty point of view."

"I think most faculty respect him. I think most students like him," says Mueller. "I think he does have concern for students and faculty."

But the dean has his critics as well. Indeed, many of the very same qualities that win him praise in some corners--including the Business School's tightly knit character and the success of its fundraising efforts--are attacked by others.

Some students say McArthur is not as accessible as he is often made out to be. Even with the changes in the MBA program, they say, the Business School's curriculum lags behind other schools.

"McArthur is old school," says one first year student, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He's what the Business School was not what it should be."

McArthur's Business School is isolated from the rest of the University, the critics argue. Some charge the dean with failing to participate in the larger vision of cooperation outlined by President Neil L. Rudenstine. He can talk, the critics say, but when it comes to giving up large and wealthy alumni donors to other parts of the University, McArthur.

"[McArthur] was not enamored by the thought that he should [steer alumni donors to other divisions of the University], because he thought it would come out of the Business School's contributors," says Warren Alpert, a New York entrepreneur and 1947 Business School graduate who this year donated $20 million to the Medical School.

"But Rudenstine was very persuasive and [the Business School is] now sharing with the other schools," Alpert says.

McArthur's colleagues deny the charges.

"John has made it extremely clear from the moment I arrived that he wanted to help," says Rudenstine. "He really has."

"I really don't understand why the Business School gets this rap for being either ornery or uncooperative," says Fineberg. "It escapes me, because my experience is so totally contrary to that.

"From the time that I became dean, I can tell you without reservation that among the most important friends of [the School of Public Health] from outside our school's alumni are alumni of the Harvard Business School, many of whom were introduced by John McArthur," Fineberg continues. "So, I say, where's the beef?"

McArthur, too, denies the charge that he is not cooperative. And the dean talks passionately about the importance of promoting University-wide cooperation through the five interfaculty programs--dealing with the brain, the environment, health policy, public education and ethics--to be targeted in the upcoming fund drive.

"We can't be a successful commercial school just sitting over here in Allston," he says, echoing a standard Rudenstine refrain. "For us, the success of the University is one of the most important things that has to happen."

Still, some Harvard administrators say the cooperation McArthur evidences is a relatively recent development.

"The pace of it is accelerated markedly," says Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Fred L. Glimp '50. "Neil [Rudenstine] has really managed to forge a partnership with him.

"[McArthur] feels enormous responsibility for the quality of his school but he's being a darn good University citizen now," Glimp says.

The dean admits that he puts special value on the accomplishments of the Business School.

"When Derek [Bok] brought me over, probably three weeks after Halloween, to tell [the Board of Overseers] what he'd done...I was clear about my priorities," McArthur says. "For me the first one was my family, period. The second was my friends. The third was the Harvard Business School and the fourth was Harvard."

Rudenstine says that approach is appropriate.

"Every dean has to worry in the first instance, quite properly, about the health and vitality of the school that they're in charge of," the president says. "At the same time, I think they realize that if we don't all succeed, whether a few succeed or not, we haven't really succeeded as an institution."

Still, while McArthur's colleagues around the University defend the dean against allegations that he is uncooperative, some do acknowledge instances of the Business School's seeming isolation from the rest of Harvard.

Provost Green, for example, concedes that "it is a bit odd" that he is not allowed to use Shad Hall, the opulent new gymnasium and recreation center McArthur had built at a cost of $20 million.

"I don't want to make too much of it," Green says. "It kind of goes with the way Dean McArthur runs the school. The idea is, these are his people and this is his family."

McArthur says Shad Hall is not open for University wide use because it is too over-crowded already, with 300,000 visits annually. They include affiliates of the Business School and high school students invited in on weekends from the surrounding Allston and Brighton communities.

And while Green speaks of the Business School as having "a different mindset" from the rest of the University, he adds. "They play ball in a lot of ways that people don't think."

For McArthur, playing ball means using the Business School's resources in the service of the community, particularly in terms of providing opportunities to those without.

That, he says, is one of the reasons why underprivileged high school students have access to Shad Hall.

And it is why the dean becomes so animated when he talks about public education--one of the five new interfaculty programs and an issue close to McArthur's heart.

"I think it's a cancer--the public education system. It just doesn't work," he says. "You just look around Boston or any other big city and there are just lots of kids that are totally left behind, they have no chance at all...It's something that's got to get fixed."

Students at the Business School are encouraged to work in public education, he says.

And McArthur says he might work as a public school teacher one day after he retires.

It is important, he asserts, for people who have been as lucky as he has to return something to the community. That notion--with the premium it places on public service--may seem strange coming from the dean of the Harvard Business School and the leader of a symbolic stronghold of free market capitalism.

But coming from the John McArthur who once worked in a sawmill and who never dreamed of going to college, the notion is not that strange at all.CrimsonTia A. ChapmanBusiness School Dean JOHN H. McARTHUR