Speaking softly, Few defined future of University

William Preston Few, with a frail build and a thin mustache, was by no means a physical force. If anything stood out about the looks of him, it was his great round ears and the probing brown eyes. When he spoke to his English students at Trinity College, Few did so with gentleness and in general terms, hardly ever brashly or in any overanalytical manner. And he had no love for public speaking or the dramatic; in his presidential inauguration speech in 1910, he unobtrusively proposed: "The greatness of a college depends not upon the size of its plant or the number of its students, but upon the quality of the men who teach and the quality of the men who learn, upon its ideals and its influence."

It was with a persistent concentration, then, that Few came to use his influence on the sizable personality of James B. Duke, known as "Buck" to his friends, a tobacco and electrical entrepreneur to most, and as the prime mover to the university he would come to endow.

 As an institution, Trinity was as respected and modest as its leader when Few took over as president, but it relied on the Duke family quite openly to support its strictly undergraduate sustainability. Ben Duke, J.B.'s brother, had been consistently supporting the college, both financially and vocally--even if Trinity couldn't completely follow through on his vision, such as welcoming women to the school. James would grant his brother's wish and join the Trinity board in 1918, but he remained aloof, more concerned with dealing in his business ventures from his home in New York City.

Few was always considering Trinity's place within higher education, and with the looming presence of Johns Hopkins a few hundred miles north of Durham, the man who had his roots in undergraduate education moved swiftly and thoughtfully toward developing Trinity as a research university centered on the undergraduate college, a school that could be a mover and shaker on the national level and for the interests of the South.

The president politely wrote to James B. Duke, but with an almost annoying frequency that picked up while he was hospitalized for months in 1921, when Few would develop the parameters for Duke University. The hugely expanded school was to have a law school, a school of engineering, a graduate school for arts and sciences and eventually a medical school.

Much to Few's delight, Duke entertained the big thinking and ran with it. He prepared his checkbook and dispatched Few to find a look for the university, which would lean largely on the Georgian style of the University of Virginia and especially the Gothic style of Princeton, near Duke's country estate.

From there, everything transpired quietly and mostly on Duke's terms, though he was clearly on the same page as the quieter Few. Then, on Dec. 11, 1924, Duke made an indenture for $40 million, and the institution underwent its third major retooling--this one clearly on a marvelous scale.

In its first issue after winter vacation, The Trinity Chronicle warned in its campus insider editorial column "College Collections" of the project's grandiosity and the approach by the cabinet of men behind it: "They know, as does everyone who has had experience such as theirs, that universities are not made in that manner. They grow; they develop slowly. They may be as heavily endowed as Standard Oil and yet not approach the meaning of a real university."