An Examined Life
Philosopher, arborist, world traveler, comet watcher or collector of Mexican folk art, the late Holcombe Austin always shared his enthusiasm for life
By Hannah Benoit
Holcombe Austin was four years old when his parents took him up to the flat rooftop of a house in Mexico to watch Halley's Comet streaking across the night sky. The year was 1910.
"I want you to look at that and remember it," his mother told him. "Remember it!"
And he did. So it was only fitting that, 76 years later, Austin would want to witness the comet's return-this time with Ethelind, his wife of more than half a century. The pair traveled to New Zealand to see the comet from a better vantage point. Ethelind recalls staying in a hotel "in the middle of nowhere" and being roused at 3 a.m.
"Then they put us on a bus and took us out even farther into the hinterlands," she recounts. The skies, at first overcast, soon cleared, and the Austins' guide exclaimed that he could see the comet's tail. "We had a very good view of it, and it was very exciting."
It was a remarkable moment in the life of a remarkable man--an individual who, throughout his 96 years, embodied the Platonic wisdom that "the life which is unexamined is not worth living." Indeed, Austin saw his chosen discipline of philosophy as "concerned not with making a living, but with how to live, in the sense of finding what is worth living for." Austin found such things at every turn--and he never stopped looking. Whether as a professor of philosophy, self-educated arborist, world traveler, comet watcher or collector of Mexican folk art, he noticed, he remembered, and he shared his enthusiasms until his death in January. And those who knew him will never forget his contagious love of learning and teaching.
Holcombe McCulloch Austin was born in 1906 in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, where his parents were medical missionaries. The family left the country seven years later, fleeing the chaos of the Mexican Revolution. When they returned to reclaim some possessions some time later, their train came under fire from Pancho Villa and a group of rebels, galloping alongside on horseback. Young Holcombe's mother ordered him to duck, "but he kept popping his head up, because he wanted to see what was going on," according to Ethelind Austin. "He thought it was a great adventure."
Professor Austin saw all of life as a great adventure. He was a vibrant member of the Wheaton community for more than six decades, serving for 31 years as a professor of philosophy and 30 more as the college's resident tree expert. Earlier this year, Austin died in Colorado, where he and his wife and children spent many summers at their family ranch.
The couple lived in Norton until 2002, and in recent years Professor Austin was best known on campus as leader of Wheaton's beloved "Tree Walk," given at Commencement and AutumnFest. In Austin's own words, the Tree Walk was "a seasonal celebration of the beauty discernible in Wheaton's trees when seen by the educated eye." His tours blended extensive botanical knowledge, a delight in the grace of trees and a rich stock of Wheaton lore-all well spiced with wit. Pointing out the 
"double-centenarian" sugar maple between Mary Lyon Hall and Watson, for instance, he would comment on its habits, extol its magnificence and then declare, "It is said that George Washington tied his horse to this tree on his way to Cambridge to take charge of the American army. You can believe that story or not. As a philosopher, I want you to have the absolute truth, and the absolute truth is, George Washington either tied his horse to that tree, or he didn't."
Once, only a handful of people showed up for the Tree Walk, and someone suggested that Austin might not want to give the tour to such a small group. As Mrs. Austin tells it, he replied, "Of course I'll give it. I have given it for as many as a hundred and as few as two. The two were a woman and her dog. The dog really loved the trees!"
As he shepherded folks around campus, carrying his hook-ended walking stick, his tree descriptions were akin to poetry, sprinkled with references to a venerable elm's "wonderful tracery against the sky" or its "dappled shade" at Commencement. Also evident was his interest in the role of trees within the built environment.
Rosalind Ekman Ladd '55 remembers how he described not only the trees but also "the aesthetic patterns of the building sites and walkways on the old campus, the careful lineup of the spires and tall treetops, and other things that opened my eyes to see familiar things in new ways." He remained, by habit of thinking, the professor of aesthetics he once was.
Beginning in the 1960s, Austin also spearheaded the revival of Wheaton's Class Tree program, having observed that more than half of the trees planted from 1918 on had been destroyed by disease, hurricanes or new construction. In the ensuing years he helped select and plant more than 250 campus trees and shrubs that were either sponsored by Reunion classes or planted to memorialize or honor members of the college community. At the dedications of these trees, Austin recited poems and essays of his own device and, as Professor of Music Ann Sears recalls, he always "matched the tree to the person, as in planting the beautiful maple tree near the computer center in memory of Fred Kollett. It's a fastigia, which means it's tall and slender, and very much like a beacon--as Fred was to the technology developments on campus for so many years."
Austin first encountered Wheaton not as a professor but as a member of the Harvard Glee Club, in 1929. En route to campus, the club's bus got lost in a driving rain, then got stuck on an unpaved road behind the Chapel. The singers ended up slogging on foot across the swampy lower campus, muddying their patent-leather shoes and tuxedo trousers. The concert ran late, and the Glee Club men were dismayed when, shortly before ten o'clock, "a loud bell went off and all the girls jumped up and had to get back ... [to] the dormitory," Austin later recalled in an oral history (courtesy of the Gebbie Archives). The post-concert party was canceled. "So, we got back into the bus and made our way through the mud and back to Cambridge," he said with a laugh. "That was in the days of really rigid rules."
Austin graduated summa cum laude from Davidson College, received his master's degree from Harvard, and studied variously in England, France and Germany. When Holcombe and Ethelind came to Wheaton in 1941, most faculty members lived on or near campus. The couple and their young son, John, moved into a cottage on Main Street, near the present location of Watson Fine Arts. Their home was always open to students, several of whom boarded with them over the years.
Ros Ladd recalls a visit to the Austin house in February of her senior year.
"Mrs. Austin sat me down at the kitchen table and served up a wonderful piece of home-baked cherry pie, in honor of George Washington's birthday," she said. "And then Holcombe launched into a gentle but persuasive sales talk about going to graduate school. He must have made some phone calls behind the scenes as well, because without a whole lot of angst on my part, I was admitted to the graduate program [in philosophy] at Brown.... Graduate school was not a typical choice for women at that time, so I have always been grateful for his guiding me in that direction." Ladd later joined Wheaton's faculty, becoming a colleague to her former professor.
Many alumnae share Ladd's profound appreciation for Austin's mentoring. Carolyn Rice Brown '50, a philosophy major who went on to become a principal dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in New York, remembers the personal attention she received in the senior seminars Austin held in his home.
"There were only four of us [in the class], and it was marvelous," Brown recalled. "I have this fantasy of what it must be like studying at Oxford and Cambridge, and it felt like we were in that milieu. And then Ethelind would arrive with tea and homemade bread on a tray." Brown kept in close touch with both Austins over the years.
So did Deborah Haigh Dluhy '62, now dean and deputy director for education at the School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "I am struck by the many ways he was able to relate to me and my interests-as student, dancer, young scholar, alumna, career person, mother, spouse, arts specialist," said Dluhy, a Wheaton trustee. "It reflected his own intense appreciation for life."
"He just loved his students, and he loved teaching," said Mrs. Austin. Her daughter, Susan Austin Ricketts, adds, "He just plain liked everybody. This is a wonderful quality, to enjoy people and what they have to offer." Though his intellect was prodigious, "we forgot how smart he was," because of his genial nature.
Austin's teaching had a powerful impact on his students. Ros Ladd remembers his Greek philosophy course: "We were impressed by his depth of knowledge, especially of the myths, and his ability to read passages to us in the original Greek. At moments we thought it might be Socrates himself who was standing before us. He looked and acted like the Platonic essence, the ideal, of what a philosophy professor should be."
In honor of the professor, Sara Terry Graves '60 and Amanda Tevepaugh Macaulay '60 established the annual Holcombe M. Austin Prize in Philosophy. Graves recalls learning about Hegel's concepts of thesis, antithesis and synthesis in Austin's senior seminar. To this day, she says, whenever she encounters "any issue where two groups are diametrically opposed, the thought 'synthesis' comes to mind."
Tulin Mentese Levitas '62, an eventual recipient of the Austin Prize, came to Wheaton from Turkey as a full-scholarship philosophy major. Levitas appreciated Austin's personal attention at a time when she was far from home and family. During a father-daughter weekend, he acted as her surrogate father and, in 1963, when Levitas was married at Cole Chapel, she again asked Austin to stand in for her father, who couldn't attend.
"He very graciously accepted, and I was comforted once more while holding onto his arm and walking down the aisle," she said. Austin also helped her secure a graduate assistantship at Boston University--and she is now a philosophy professor at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland.
In the late 1950s, the Austins, by then the parents of three, learned they would be uprooted from their house on the northern edge of campus. Years later, Austin mirthfully recalled the faculty meeting at which President Meneely announced, "I have good news for almost everyone, some bad news for the Austins. We're going to tear down their house and put up an art center instead." Ultimately, the house was moved to Taunton Avenue to make way for Watson Fine Arts. On a wooded parcel near campus, part of the original Wheaton farm, the Austins built a new home, designed by Walter Gropius' firm, The Architects' Collaborative of Cambridge. In 1961, this single-story, glass-walled house won an award from Architectural Record magazine.
As past president of the American Society for Aesthetics in 1965, Austin testified in Congress in support of the Pell-Thompson Bill establishing the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities. He was present when President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill, and received one of the pens the president used. His academic interests lay in Aristotelian philosophy, realistic philosophy and aesthetics. In 1971, at an international conference in Sweden, he delivered a paper entitled, "The Aesthetics of the Superhighway," drawing a link between aesthetics and safety on modern thoroughfares.
For Wheaton's Sesquicentennial in 1985, Austin collaborated with Nancy Monick Budd '59 in editing Alive and Well Said: Ideas at Wheaton, an anthology of outstanding writings from Wheaton's first 150 years. "When I think of the faculty who will forever be part of my Wheaton memories," said Budd, "he stands out. I didn't take his courses, but our families bonded through this project." Budd's son, Bill, worked on the Austins' ranch one summer, and the families have kept in touch. "The whole thing started a relationship that continued with my son and his family."
Also during his retirement, Austin's guest lectures at Wheaton drew upon his multifarious knowledge of comets, Mexican folk carvings, church architecture and antique Navajo blankets. Professor Emerita Bojan Jennings relates that she and her husband once happened to own such a blanket, which was stolen from their home in Plymouth. Austin had seen the blanket only once, yet was able to describe it to the insurance company in sufficient detail to establish its value. He loved horseback riding and golden retrievers, and was also a skilled tennis player, "always playing in white flannel trousers," according to Professor Emeritus Paul Helmreich. "I never, ever saw him in a pair of shorts!"
A longtime friend of the Austins, Helmreich said it is "hard to think of Holcombe separate from Ethelind," his wife of 69 years, who worked in the college library for 25 years. Professor of Biology Scott Shumway remembers the first time he met the pair, at a porch party in 1992: "Art professor Vaino Kola ... pointed to a couple walking toward the house and said, 'Have you met Holcombe and Ethelind? They have been married forever, yet whenever you see them, you can tell that they are very much in love.'" Shannon Carter '71, who exchanged Christmas cards, photographs and notes with the Austins for over 30 years, declares that it was hard to tell the difference between their Christmas photos from year to year, because "both of them were so wonderfully timeless."
The Tree Walk lives on. Shumway continues to offer the tour on Commencement weekend, giving it his own personal stamp. He has also taken charge of the ongoing process of cataloging and labeling the campus trees, in hopes of establishing a true arboretum.
"Holcombe's legacy will live on for years in the beautiful trees that he helped plant on the Wheaton campus," Shumway noted.
Austin also leaves us an enduring lesson in the power of lifelong learning. "What was remarkable to me was that he embarked on a second career as a tree specialist," said Hannah Goldberg, provost emerita. "He continued to be a learner all his life.... It's a wonderful example of how someone can stay connected to a community in a way that's meaningful to that individual and to the community."
When Austin was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wheaton in 1990, that community gave him a standing ovation. Though few in the audience had known him in his role as philosophy professor, he had claimed a lasting place in their hearts.
"He gave a little wave," recalls Susan Austin Ricketts, "and the crowd roared."
Hannah Benoit is Wheaton's associate director of communications for Web development.
