His modesty belied greatness
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Monday, September 18, 2006
By Ruth Ann Dailey
Edwardo Rhodes first encountered Carnegie Mellon University, literally, when an over-zealous security guard threw him up against a wall on campus.
The young Edwardo had been running in a track event at Schenley Park and headed to the campus in search of a bathroom. The guard assumed the African-American teenager was there to steal stuff.
"In my little track shorts?" he asked, still incredulous today. "And put it where?"
He encountered Carnegie Mellon again when he arrived in 1972, after four years in the U.S. Navy, to earn a doctorate from what was then called the School for Urban and Public Affairs.
And Dr. Edwardo L. Rhodes returned again Saturday to pay tribute to the legacy of the school's former dean, Otto Anderson Davis -- or "Toby," as nearly everyone called him. From around the country Toby's peers, and former students like Dr. Rhodes who'd become his peers, gathered to salute this remarkable mentor who died May 9.
It was the kind of gathering where a phrase like "his paper on decision theory" could have been the punch line to an inside joke, but far from being a rarefied academic ego-fest, the afternoon celebrated the warmth and humility that made this one man's impact so far-reaching.
Carnegie Mellon economics professor Robert P. Strauss, who organized the memorial service, remembered that Toby, a libertarian with a firm belief in individual responsibility, would buy his kids old Volkswagen Beetles they'd have to fix up themselves if they wanted a set of wheels.
Like everything else Toby Davis did, Dr. Strauss said, it was "very unusual, very creative, very smart."
Toby Davis had been teaching for several years at then-Carnegie Institute of Technology when philanthropist Richard King Mellon, disturbed by the 1960s race riots and America's crumbling cities, challenged the institute to create a graduate school that would equip civic leaders to address these modern problems.
Toby Davis wrote the vision paper for what is now the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management, securing a $10 million grant from the R.K. Mellon Foundation -- big money today but "a king's ransom" back then, said Carnegie Mellon President Jared L. Cohon.
Toby's co-author, William W. Cooper, who became the school's first dean, sent a videotaped tribute for Saturday's service from the University of Texas at Austin where, at 94, he still supervises doctoral dissertations. Dr. Cooper noted that Toby had carefully chosen the Heinz School's former name -- the School for Urban and Public Affairs -- for its acronym, SUPA. That stood for "the supa-men and supa-women the school was designed to produce."
That vision's fulfillment was evident at the memorial service: Plenty of the serious suits ended in skirts, and the faces above were of every possible hue. The former students had been drawn to the school in the 1970s, well ahead of the nation's move toward diversity. In his belief that universities should be as diverse as the cities they thrive in, he was "years and miles ahead of everyone else," Dr. Strauss said.
As chairman of Carnegie Mellon's Human Relations Commission in 2000, nearly two decades after he'd stepped down as dean of SUPA, Toby led the effort to establish domestic partner benefits. He took on the contentious issue with such respectful listening that the pro-benefits decision was made "by a united committee even though there were very strong views opposed to it," said professor Joseph Kadane.
Praise of his "modesty and determination" flowed through the service, but two lines that provoked laughter underscored why this prodigious scholar, among many accomplished scholars, had such impact.
"He proved you could be a nice person, a moral person and be a faculty member," said former Provost J. Patrick Crecine. A burst of self-directed laughter greeted this allusion to the nasty political jockeying reportedly so rampant in academe.
A gentler roll of laughter greeted Dr. Strauss' reference to Toby's regular purchase of Volkswagens, which he explained to me later.
"Their driveway always looked like a VW garage," a fact known to most of those present because all were welcome in his home, undergrads and Nobel laureates alike.
The hospitality he displayed with his wife, Carol, he extended to his work; even undergrads became his collaborators.
As Carnegie Mellon trustee Robert Dunlap put it: "We are ever so much in Toby's debt."
But when a great man is also a modest man, there can be millions of people in his debt who'll never know it.
Ruth Ann Dailey can be reached at rdailey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1733.