“We are taking students that no one else will take,” Monro told U.S. News and World Reports after his first year at Miles. “And we’re designing programs for the whole spread of students—remedial programs, reinforcement programs, enrichment programs, special curricula in black history, black culture, black problems.”
“Harvard isn’t going to do this,” he added.
“In my mind he was like one of those missionaries who came south after the Civil War who helped to found schools for former slaves. It was in the same zeal,” said David L. Evans, a Harvard admissions officer and former member of the Harvard Foundation, which honored Monro two years ago. “But he was sensitive enough to fit in. He didn’t go down there pontificating or condescending.”
In the early ’70s, Epps visited Monro at Miles, after a Harvard alumna had donated $70,000 to the former dean for his work at Miles.
“He was in this hot basement room,” Epps recalled, “and I asked him what he did with the money.”
“How about some air conditioning?” Epps suggested.
“I gave it to the financial aid office,” Monro replied. “I’m doing fine.”
Born in 1912 to middle-class parents in Andover, Mass., Monro always said he was learning more from his students at Miles than he could teach them.
His social progressiveness was balanced by his seriousness as an administrator, earning him among students the reputation of a disciplinarian. But as he dealt with a flurry of campus controversies—from changes in parietals to a professor’s alleged LSD experiments—Monro strengthened ties between faculty and undergraduates.
In the mid-’50s, as director of financial aid, Monro laid the groundwork for the Student Employment Office and founded Harvard Student Agencies to help needy students pay tuition fees. Later he argued for a freshman seminar program.
As dean Monro held informal meetings with students and in the ’60s helped found the Southern Courier, a paper written by Crimson editors focusing on civil rights issues in the south.
Monro had written for The Crimson as an undergraduate and in his senior year led a revolt against the paper and founded the socially minded Harvard Journal.
Monro earned a Bronze Star while serving in the Navy during World War II. While on the U.S.S. Enterprise in 1948, he was given the task of integrating the black and white sailors on board, following the orders of President Truman.
Following his graduation in 1934, Monro married his childhood sweetheart, Dorothy Stevens Foster, who died in 1984.
They are survived by their daughters, Ann Monro of Winchester, Mass., and Janet Dreyer, of Claremont, Calif., and three grandchildren.