Wilfrid Gardiner Hamlin

May 18, 1918 - Aug. 4, 2009
Will attended high school in Northampton, and college at Antioch College, Ohio, and Black Mountain College, North Carolina, before graduating from Wayne State University in 1944. He received a Master's degree from the Putney Graduate School, a Ph.D. from the Union Graduate School in 1976, and also studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. During the 1940s Will was a civilian publicist for the Army Air Force and an educational tester for the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation. In 1948 Will joined the faculty of Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. Will worked for Goddard in a variety of capacities for more than fifty years. He taught English and American literature, Education, Psychology, and Film. He directed plays, served as the College Editor, and was Dean of the pioneering Adult Degree Program. He was the co-author, with Margaret Skutch, of To Start a School. Will was passionate about Goddard, Black Mountain, and the progressive educational ideas of John Dewey. He delighted in the natural beauty of central Vermont and coastal Maine; in birds, music, modern literature, and in the works of many local writers and artists. In 2006 Will came to live in northern Indiana, and received wonderful and loving care from the staffs at the Waterford at Edison Lakes, Providence House, and Buchanan Meadows, where he died peacefully. Will was preceded in death by his first wife, Elizabeth Brett, whom he married in 1944 and who died in 1968, and by his brothers, Norman and Talbot. Survivors are his son Christopher, of South Bend, IN, and granddaughters, Elizabeth Hamlin of Milwaukee, WI, and Katherine and Angharad Hamlin of South Bend, and his former wife and long time friend and companion, Alice Blachly, of Calais, Vermont. A memorial service is planned for central Vermont. Memorial contributions may be sent to the Will Hamlin Scholarship Fund at Goddard College, Plainfield Vermont, 05667.