Reader Response George McCully ’60

The obit for John Barcroft ’59 in BAM June-August missed a great and generally unknown, uniquely Brunonian, story. When John was a freshman in 1955, Barnaby Keeney was President, the Wriston Quadrangle had recently been built primarily for on-campus fraternity housing, and plans were presented publicly for what was then to be a complementary “West Quadrangle” for “independent” (nonfraternity) students. Those plans however lacked equal facilities for undergraduate socializing, which John recognized was a fundamental flaw. Through the courtesy of Keeney’s assistant, John McIntyre, Barcroft as a freshman took his criticism directly to a meeting with President Keeney, who was persuaded by John to withdraw and re-do the publicly announced plans, which then became the West (now “Keeney”) Quadrangle. Thus began an extraordinary close friendship between John and Keeney, lasting throughout John’s undergraduate years and continuing in his postgraduate studies and early career as a historian. In 1965 President Keeney was appointed by LBJ as the first director of the National Endowment for the Humanities, he then appointed John ( age 28) to be the first director of NEH’s Office of Planning. This enabled John to create the strategically significant Public Programs of the Endowment, including our unique national system of State Humanities Councils still flourishing today.