A House Is A Home . . .

As the House Plan ends its 25th year, Ronald M. Ferry '12, Master of Winthrop House, can look back on one of the University's finest eras. Youngest of President Lowell's seven original Housemasters, Ferry is the only member of that group still on the job.

Twenty-five years have brought many changes in the Houses, he says, but most important is the increased enrollment. Before the war, when there were only 270 men in Winthrop, he could call each by his first name. Now with 380, he finds it difficult just to remember all the faces. Though he must rely on an claborate filing system to refresh his memory for recommendations and the like, he continues to take a strong personal interest in the House members. Despite the growing enrollment, however, Ferry remains a firm supporter of the House system, and says, "If Harvard doesn't take a fifty or a hundred-year filing at making the House plan work, it doesn't deserve another penny from anyone."

Born in Chicago, Ferry came to Harvard 1908 despite the fact his father and brother were Yale men. But the alma mater of which he is proudest is New York's Presbyterian Hospital, where be spent a two year interneship after graduating from Columbia Medical School in 1916. Ferry also found time to get married in 1916, and even made an expedition with General Pershing's National Guard unit to the Mexican border, where Poncho Villa was shooting up local villages. During one of the skirmishes, Ferry recalls, a stray bullet whizzed past his nose, pierced the head of a mule standing next to him, and stopped only when it hit a pack of cigarettes in a sergeant's pocket.

After spending the First World War as a Lieutenant in the Army Medical Corps in Georgia, Ferry won a National Research Council fellowship and studied physical chemistry for two years at M.I.T. He returned to Harvard as an instructor in 1928, Master of Winthrop House in 1930, and associate professor in 1931. He has been at Winthrop ever since, with the exception of three years spent as a lieutenant colonel in the Medical Corps during World War II, in charge of chemical defense against biological warfare.

Ferry's scientific research has ranged from the study of hemoglobin to immunal chemistry, and his latest endeavor, the outgrowth of this World War II work, concerns the bacteria responsible for airborne infection. He teaches no formal courses, but divides his time between tutorial, research, and the House.

In his spare time, he retreats to his isolated camp in southern New Hampshire, where, ten miles from the nearest town, he hunts birds, skis with his wife, and makes wooden tables and cabinets in an elaborate shop. So good is his cabinet making that he was able to give his daughter a dining room table as a wedding present.

Winthrop House and Winthrop men remain the center of Ferry's interest. He recently circled the dining room, congratulating all the students who had done well on their general examinations. When freshmen begin applying to Winthrop House he goes to the greatest pains to investigate each student's background, looking first for men with balanced interests. But where other Housemasters may accept students with any outside interest, the preponderance of Winthrop applicants who are athletes forces Ferry to search for an activity other than sports. But he likes his athletic House. A sign of this attitude is evident in a letter he sometimes sends, to Winthrop House men who make the Dean's List, congratulating them on their achievement but urging them not to let studies occupy so much of their time that they cannot engage in activities.

Winthrop men generally recognize and appreciate Ferry's interest in them, and they think of him as a straightforward, frank man who will tell them directly if he thinks the cannot give them a recommendation, but who never gives a bad one. Their attitude toward him is one of warm affection rather than cold respect, and this regard is demonstrated each year when 50 or 60 members of the Winthrop House Alumni Committee return to see him at the Christmas dinner.

Summing up his 25 years as Housemaster, Ferry says, "Harvard is a gold mine littered with nuggets, some good and some bad. You can get some good ones if you look hard enough. But nobody is going to ram them down your throat."