Faculty Profile

When The Owl turned up outside University Hall last term, only a few of the Deans and officials within noticed his arrival. Most of them heard about it for the first time from the morning papers. Across the way in Weld Hall, however, there was no such administrative indifference. There, John U. Monro, immediately recognizing the bird's potentialities, mentioned it to a CRIMSON reporter within a few hours of its appearance.

Monro's alert news sense comes naturally. If he were not the University's able and alert Counsellor for Veterans, he would probably be a newspaperman. As undergraduate leader of the most daring journalistic venture in recent Harvard history, end later as a staffer in the News Office, he seemed headed, before the war, for a permanent berth in the Fourth Estate. Four years of administrative responsibility on an aircraft carrier made all the difference and put the erstwhile leg-man behind a desk once and for all.

Monro came to Cambridge from Andover in 1930 as a freshman and quickly joined the CRIMSON, where he soon became editorial chairman. In the middle of his senior year, he led the rebelling faction in an internal dispute over CRIMSON policy and organization. "The fight split the board right down the middle," he says, "and there seemed nothing for the dissenters to do but resign and start a new paper, So we did."

Monro became president of the new daily, called the Journal, which included on its masthead such present greats in the editorial world as E. J. Kahn '37 of the New Yorker and Joseph J. Thorndike, Jr. '34 managing editor of Life. Despite a brave start, the paper was forced out of business after a few weeks by debts and the difficulties of competition with an established monopoly.

The abortive Journal struggle left Monro so exhausted that he finessed his last term in 1934 and returned a year later to finish his College work. Meanwhile, he started to help out in the old News Office. When he finally got his degree in 1935, he stayed on there, and for the next six years worked on the far-reaching and complicated business of Harvard publicity. Simultaneously, he filled such odd jobs as correspondent for the Boston Transcript until its demise in 1941, and even took pictures for the Alumni Bulletin. (Like many good reporters, Monro can juggle a Speed-Graphic with one hand and take notes with the other.)

In August, 1941, he entered the Navy as a public relations officer and was soon transferred to sea duty on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Four years aboard "The Big E," he saw it through almost every major Pacific naval campaign from Santa Cruz and Guadalcanal to the Gilberts and Marshalls. He was paid off in 1946 as the ship's First Lieutenant. Today, his ground-floor office at the northeast corner of Weld is still littered with books and documents about the war, which he is using in preparation of a pictures-and-text book commemorating the exploits and crew of the fabulous carrier.

He returned to Harvard in the fall of '46 and took his first non-journalistic job as assistant to Counsellor for Veterans Wilbur J. Bender, who at that time was trying to organize the College's small-scale army of ex-G.I.'s. In June, 1947, he became Counsellor himself, when Bender was made Dean, and has held the job ever since.

Today, Monro still has one of the most difficult positions in the University. His long, lean frame and intent features, crowned by straight black hair that sticks up in spikes, are a familiar sight around the Yard at all hours of the day and night. His shirt-sleeved figure has been seen at his office typewriter more than once by Weld Hall residents returning from late dates. His charges, which include veterans in all parts of the University, now number something over 7,000--only 2,000 below the peak of 1946-47. His office is the channel for about ten million dollars a year in government payment for education and subsistence. Although his assistant, Miss Margaret Witt, handles nine-tenths of the routine red tape difficulties familiar to all veterans, there are enough left over to keep him busy six days a week. "Just when you think you've got everything caught up and running on schedule, the top blows off some new problem and before you know it the whole detail is fouled up again," he explains.

Many of his most difficult jobs remain unknown to the veterans they concern. Monro like to think of himself as a "shock-absorber" between the well-intentioned but sometimes confusing directives of Uncle Sam and the individual veteran. He tries not to disturb the latter too often with forms-in-triplicate or progress questionnaires.

About his future--for veterans are a sometime thing, after all-Monro is not talking. He would like to write a novel someday, and not about the war, either. He drops in at the Armory every week for whatever sort of reserve drill they give full Commanders in the Navy. And he talks, a bit wistfully, of the little vacation he's going to take "after everything gets squared away." Beyond this, his plans are vague, except for the assurance that he "aims to be useful."

Whatever happens, his present surpassing skill at "being useful" is the main reason why the average veteran at Harvard never had it so good.