As the tumultuous 1960s evolved and campus riots swept the nation, it became increasingly clear that the University would need a more professional police force.

During his tenure, HUPD officers became the first department in the state to be granted special state police status as campus officers, greatly expanding their authority and powers of arrest.

The campus unrest of the late 1960s tested Tonis and his newly professionalized department. His quiet and steadfast leadership through the troubles on campus earned him the enduring respect of both students and faculty. Numerous times, HUPD officers helped quell riots in Harvard Square, and carefully policed protests in the Yard.

Perhaps the defining moment of the new era in campus policing came on April 9, 1969, when students occupied University Hall and forcibly ejected the deans from the building. He publicly opposed the administration’s plan to send in 400 state and local police to break up the protest.

“As far as the University police are concerned, we didn’t want to do anything about it, but they’re way over our heads now,” Tonis said at the time.

Following the bloody bust, in which 250 students were arrested and more than 75 injured, Tonis, near tears, circulated among the traumatized protesters in the Yard apologizing for the violence and urging the students not to retaliate.

Ever the jazz and classical music lover, Tonis kept a radio on his desk so he could listen to the Boston Symphony as he worked.

He retired in 1975 when he reached the mandatory retirement age of 66, although he continued to dine regularly in Adams House for many years.

George A. Weller

George A. Weller ’29, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Chicago Daily News and former editorial chair of The Crimson, died in Rome on Dec. 19, 2002. He was 95.

“He was really a breed of man that one rarely encounters now,” said Anthony Weller, his son.

Some of his best-known work brought him to the battlefields of World War II, including the Nazi invasion of the Balkans and the fall of Singapore to the Japanese.

Weller won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for war correspondence for a story on the world’s first major surgical operation in a submerged submarine, an appendectomy during which the crew had to make use of a tea strainer and spoons.

After the war, Weller defied a ban by the U. S. government against visiting the Japanese cities that had been struck by atomic bombs.