By El’ad Nichols-Kaufman (A25)

This is the third part of a three-part series examining the history of the first class of the New Program. Part I deals with the 1937-38 school year, while Part II concerns the following three years. Part III follows six graduating members of the first class after their time at St. John’s College.

When the Class of 1941 completed St. John’s College, TIME thought the occasion notable enough to briefly profile all six of the New Program’s remaining members. Beyond identifying key Program elements for those not already familiar with the school (while snidely noting that students only wound up reading about 100 of 120 books off the original reading list), the article inquired about graduates’ plans for their future. 

This question, which has plagued many a Johnnie ever since, was particularly pointed—not just because of the historical moment in which the Class of 1941 was living (all would soon be drafted to fight in the Second World War), but because of their novel education, made all the more unique thanks to the New Program’s still-nascent status in the world of higher education.

TIME had three years prior referred to St. John’s as the “seedbed of the American Renaissance,” putting the intellectual and moral future of the nation into the hands of its tutors and students. If St. John’s truly could create new American men, their future would be that of the new American.

Such broad and lofty declarations may seem overblown in hindsight, but it is worth remembering that a St. John’s education is, to this day, supposed to be revolutionary. The Program is not designed to be an end in itself: rather, to quote its founding manifesto, it is supposed to help create “liberally educated persons” who “acquire a lifelong commitment to the pursuit of fundamental knowledge and to the search for unifying ideas … are intelligently and critically appreciative of their common heritage and conscious of their social and moral obligations … [and] are well-equipped to master the specific skills of any calling, and they possess the means and the will to become free and responsible citizens.”

This is a tall aim for any institution, and as members of a community dedicated to this purpose, what we do with our future does have great importance. If St. John’s College has at all succeeded, there should be some distinct way in which the education has shaped the lives of its graduates. For the first class to experience the New Program, the pressure to prove its success was likely even stronger.

Given the power of a St. John’s education, it is perhaps unsurprising that four out of the New Program’s initial six graduates intended to become Johnnie tutors, a path on which many future alumni would also set forth. However, given the war and other realities of life, their respective returns to St. John’s post-graduation ended up looking a bit different. None of them wound up pursuing philosophy or the humanities and instead found their calling in more practical concerns.

I hope that by presenting their respective lives, this article can help remind individual Johnnies today of the weight their futures carry—for themselves and their communities.

Thomas Lansdale Hill

Thomas Lansdale Hill, who went by Danny, was born in Baltimore in 1916. His father, Thomas Hill, worked for the Prisoner’s Aid Association in Baltimore.

While at St. John’s, Hill led an unusually active extracurricular life, playing nearly every sport imaginable; editing the yearbook’s sports section and the Collegian newspaper; and taking part in the “Orange and Black Society,” the school’s spirit group, as well as the varsity club. He additionally served as class vice-president, became chairman of the Cotillion Board organizing dances, and sang with the Glee Club. Moreover, Hill was a member of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity until its dissolution at St. John’s.

Hill was hired as the St. John’s athletic director straight after graduation, likely, I think, due to his interest in sports. He led an invigorated intramural program for the 1941-42 academic year, instituting seminars on athletics and the body while organizing new sports leagues and trying to orchestrate a “blazer club” intended to provide community service opportunities for those individuals who had earned the coveted garment.

In May 1942, Hill left St. John’s and joined the Navy, eventually being commissioned as a lieutenant and serving aboard the USS Wichita in the South Pacific. Hill received a variety of medals for his service, including the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, an Army of Occupation Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal.

Hill married Mary Frick Bumb in Santa Clara, California, in 1952. He retired from the Navy in 1953 and went on to run his own award-winning commercial advertising and public relations firm in San Jose. Hill’s passion for athletics continued, and in 1966, he was appointed to the San Jose Sports Commission. He was also involved with the St. John’s College Alumni Association for much of his life and regularly donated to his alma mater. He passed away in Los Gatos, California, in 1990.

Charles Vayne

Charles Vayne, also hailing from Baltimore, was born in 1918. He took on numerous leadership roles while at St. John’s, editing both the 1940 yearbook and the Collegian as well as serving as a “dorm manager,” or what we would today call a resident assistant, or an R.A. He acted with the King William Players and was a member of the theology club. He also played football and rowed for what was then referred to as the St. John’s “boat club.”

Vayne was hired straight out of undergrad to work as a St. John’s tutor, but this job didn’t last very long, as wartime need called him to serve. He was in the Navy for two years, from 1942-44, as an enlisted sailor. He married twice, in 1942 and in 1949, and the 1950 census lists him as an administrative assistant at an insurance company. I do not know what happened to him thereafter: records indicate that he was not involved with the St. John’s College Alumni Association.

Vayne passed away in 1992 and was survived by two children and two grandchildren, having lived his entire life in the Baltimore area.

William Henry Hatfield

William Henry Hatfield remains somewhat of a mystery to me. He was born in Highland Falls, New York, to a military family in 1918, and listed Annapolis as his city of residence while attending the college. Oddly enough, Hatfield is the only student who appears to have participated in no extracurricular activities (perhaps the original “room Johnnie?”). Hatfield said in TIME that he wanted to pursue graduate studies in physics and return to St. John’s as a tutor. He served as an enlisted sailor in the Navy during the war. His death certificate, issued in Virginia, says he worked as a pediatrician and passed away in 1997.

Henry Martyn Robert III

I found Henry Martyn Robert III to be the most well-documented member of the Class of 1941 due to his distinguished family, as he was the grandson of Robert’s Rules of Order author General Henry M. Robert. He was the only lifelong Annapolitan of the bunch, his father being a Naval Academy mathematics professor who passed away while Robert was young. His mother, Sarah Corbin Robert, was a teacher and the President General of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Robert was born in 1920, which made him one of the youngest members of the class, being only 17 when he started school. During his time at St. John’s, Robert showed interest in both the performing arts and sciences, working as a lab assistant, joining the Erlenmeyer Chemistry Club and Science Club, and participating in the Variety Club and the King William Players. Robert was also the first of many Catholics to convert during his time at the college, and he remained active in the church for the rest of his life.

In TIME, Robert indicated that he wished to study physics in graduate school and return to St. John’s. He did not do the second, but he did go on to become a physicist, working in the Naval Research Laboratory during the war and later receiving a World War II Victory Medal. He completed a master’s in physics at Laval University in Quebec, pursued further education at the University of Notre Dame, and then returned to the Naval Academy to teach physics. He soon also assumed the familial role of editing Robert’s Rules of Order: first alongside his mother and later taking it over himself, editing six editions after her death.

Robert served as parliamentarian for the National Conference of Bishops and the Supreme Council of the Knights of Columbus, of which he was a member, and won numerous awards for his work. He was also deeply involved with the St. John’s College Alumni Association and is the only member of the Class of 1941 who appears to have been retrospectively interviewed about his time at the College, with his comments appearing in Annapolis tutor J. Winfree Smith’s 1983 book A Search for the Liberal College: The Beginning of the St. John’s Program.

Robert often spoke about how the St. John’s education shaped his life’s direction, which managed to incorporate sciences, humanities, and faith in a particularly Johnnie fashion. He never married or had children and died in 2019 in Annapolis. His grave can be visited on the grounds of St. Mary’s Parish in downtown Annapolis.;

Vernon M. Padgett

Born in 1919, Vernon Morse Padgett grew up in La Plata, Maryland, to a father who worked as a car salesman. As a St. John’s student he spearheaded, and for a while singlehandedly ran, the Collegian, allowing the venerable publication to survive into the New Program. He also helped edit the yearbook and played in the St. John’s College Orchestra during its brief existence.

Padgett found time to participate in intramurals and act with the King William Players, as well as join the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity. He announced his intention to study medicine at Johns Hopkins to TIME, making him the only individual in my investigation of the Class of 1941 who went on to do what he thought he would post-graduation—largely because his medical education corresponded with a wartime need.

While studying, Padgett was a part of the Naval Reserve, eventually commissioned with the rank of lieutenant. He was married in 1944, with the wedding reported on in the society pages of the Baltimore Sun. He would go on to be married and divorced three times.

During his medical career, Padgett was a consultant for the U.S. Public Health Service. At some point, he moved to Calabasas, California, where he continued to practice medicine. Padgett eventually became involved in local politics and was elected in 1998 to the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, fighting for safe and clean water for his community. He served until his resignation in 2005, which seems to have taken place under rather contentious personal and political circumstances.

Aside from how Padgett’s political career may have ended, he apparently won public favor in his first term, where he was credited with cutting water rates by 10 percent. He also fulfilled the New Program’s founders’ vision of producing civically engaged alumni. Padgett remained involved with the St. John’s College Alumni Association for much of his life. He died in 2007.

Herbert Stallings

Herbert Stallings was born in 1919 in Baltimore. His father appears to have sometimes worked as a farmer and at other times as an insurance salesman.

Stallings began St. John’s under the old academic program but stayed on to complete his degree in the New Program. He rowed and played sports, worked as a lab assistant, and acted with the King William Players. He also wrote for the Collegian. When asked for his post-graduation plans, Stallings replied that he would either join the military or enroll in an auto-factory training school in Michigan. I suspect the outbreak of war made the choice for him, as he was commissioned as a naval lieutenant.

Following the Second Great War, Stallings went into advertising at the Baltimore News-American newspaper and married a fellow Marylander, Ruth Duke Stallings. He remained strongly connected to St. John’s and the alumni association and often spoke of how the college shaped his life. He had retired to North Carolina by 1997 and passed away there in 2004.