An Ivy League President Grounded by His Past

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By PAUL FAIN

Hanover, N.H.

James Wright, president of Dartmouth College, doesn't particularly enjoy talking about himself. The 6-foot-4 former U.S. Marine has a powerful handshake but a soft voice and a modest Midwesterner's appeal.

However, the mementos on his office desk give a few clues to the roundabout path Mr. Wright, 66, took to becoming an Ivy League president.

Amid fairly standard desk fare, such as autographed baseballs and a bust of Beethoven, are four curious items: a glass model of a human skull, a dinged-up little knife, a hefty chunk of lead, and a brass door handle.

Mr. Wright picks up the glass model, which has a gaping hole above and around one eye socket and was made at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to show the kinds of skull injuries that new medical techniques can repair. The Marine whose skull it models was severely wounded while serving in Iraq.

Mr. Wright met the young man during one of five recent trips to the Washington, D.C., area to visit with soldiers who are being treated at Walter Reed and at the National Naval Medical Center. He travels to see the wounded troops as often as possible and says he even snuck out of a January conference in Washington, attended by President Bush and 120 college presidents, for a quick trip to the hospital.

Many of the wounded "are the age of our students," Mr. Wright says. "We've got to find a way to welcome them back." He is in the early stages of planning a program to help wounded soldiers go to college and has spoken with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, as well with officials at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and at the American Council on Education.

When Mr. Wright joined the Marines as a 17-year-old in Galena, Ill., college wasn't an option. He says no more than five students from his senior class of 60 had the money or grades to attend college. His father, a World War II veteran who worked as a bartender to support the family of four, had attended only one semester of college before money got too tight to continue. None of Mr. Wright's grandparents had finished high school.

He says he and four of his high-school buddies signed up as a "way to put off, for a few years," going to work in the zinc mines where his grandfather had worked and where many in the small town were employed.

Sometime during his three years in the Marines (during which he did not see combat), Mr. Wright decided he wanted to teach history. In 1960 he enrolled at Wisconsin State University (now the University of Wisconsin at Platteville) and went to work in a zinc mine to help pay his way.

The three-inch blade that sits on his desk at Dartmouth was a valuable tool for the young miner. He used the knife, which he carried in his miner's helmet, to split the paraffin covers on sticks of dynamite.

As a so-called powderman, Mr. Wright would cut the seals to better cram the dynamite into the walls of the hard-rock mine.

His grandfather and father were not happy that he took the dangerous job of handling explosives.

"Somebody was killed that summer, doing what I was doing," Mr. Wright says of his first season.

And the fumes from the dynamite caused him blinding headaches. But the powderman gig paid 20 cents more than the $2.15 an hour he had made in his previous job as a night watchman at the mine.

He also worked as a bartender and janitor during his college days. Mining, though, was his primary job, full time during summers and on weekends during the school year, including the Saturday-night shift.

"This was my weekend routine for three years," he says.

The mines around Galena are long closed. So is the high school Mr. Wright attended, converted to condominiums a few years ago. One of Mr. Wright's uncles was involved in the construction project and salvaged the big brass handle from the school's front door.

The handle reminds Mr. Wright of the doors his education opened for him, he says. By 1968, Mr. Wright had earned master's and doctoral degrees in history from Wisconsin, specializing in populist politics.

"I was still paying off my loans when I came to Dartmouth," Mr. Wright says.

Gene R. Garthwaite helped bring Mr. Wright to the college in 1969 as a fellow history professor. His new colleague's blue-collar roots were a bit of an anomaly at the mostly upper-class Dartmouth of that era, Mr. Garthwaite says, and today are clearly behind "his real commitment to those who are less advantaged."

As Dartmouth's president, Mr. Wright says he seeks to make the college "hospitable to students regardless of their backgrounds." About 13 percent of Dartmouth's 4,300 undergraduates are first-generation college students, and about 45 percent receive some form of financial aid.

There are certainly class-crossing seams in the career paths of other college presidents or Ivy League faculty members, and Mr. Wright says "we have to be careful stereotyping." However, he admits that his background is unusual in the sphere of elite private education.

He is fairly sure he is the first Ivy League president to have been a Marine, as well as the only Dartmouth faculty member with a chunk of lead from a closed mine on his desk. Mr. Wright chipped out the lead while working in the zinc mine. (Thinking he'd keep it as a souvenir, he put it in his lunchbox. When he picked up the box, the rock weighed so much that the handle tore off.)

But Mr. Wright stresses that he has never felt uneasy at Dartmouth because of his background.

"He's comfortable with himself," Mr. Garthwaite agrees. "He knows who he is."

This quiet confidence, Mr. Garthwaite says, can make his friend come across as "very taciturn and very modest." But his forcefulness is not to be underestimated, Mr. Garthwaite says. On many issues, such as civil rights and civil liberties, Mr. Wright is both passionate and a powerfully persuasive speaker.

One topic that particularly engages him is Dartmouth.

"I'm not always well suited to sit by quietly when people are challenging the institution," Mr. Wright says.

Recently he came under fire for allegedly advocating a speech code at Dartmouth.

Although he vigorously denies the assertion, it became a rallying cry for conservative students and alumni, particularly during a recent alumni election. However, Mr. Wright stayed mostly on the sidelines as the debate played out.

"I wanted to respond," Mr. Wright says. "Maybe that's the old Marine in me. Maybe it's a good thing that the teacher in me won out."

After being at Dartmouth for 37 years, he says, "it's pretty hard to out-Dartmouth me."

But the eclectic desk mementos help remind him of his past.

"You should always remember where you came from," Mr. Wright says.

He has little use for his miner's know-how during day-to-day work at the college, but he says it does return to him when he travels around the mountainous parts of New Hampshire.

"I'm still observant when I go through rocky areas," Mr. Wright says. "I can see where the seams are."