Bryn Mawr Mourns Loss of
Barbara Auchincloss Thacher '40

Barbara Auchincloss Thacher '40, a former president of the Alumnae Association, chair of the board of trustees and recipient of the College's highest honor, the M. Carey Thomas Award, died early this month. Her loss is deeply mourned by her large family and by generations of Bryn Mawr scholars, administrators and alumnae who were inspired and sustained by her work for the College.

"Barbara was an ideal exemplar of the intelligent, capable, committed volunteer who keeps the nonprofit sector in this country afloat," says Mary Patterson McPherson, during whose presidency Thacher chaired the board of trustees. "She was a thoughtful, effective leader who undertook more or less a full-time career in education without compensation. She could not have been more gracious or more generous to the College."

Thacher was the first woman and first Bryn Mawr alumna to chair the College's board. By the time of her appointment to the post in 1980, she had already served the College as a volunteer in a variety of important roles for many years. She had sat on the College's board since 1969, chaired the presidential search committee that hired Harris Wofford, who would later become a U.S. Senator, and led a record-breaking fundraising campaign, among other achievements.

In 1985, the College honored Thacher with the M. Carey Thomas Award, a rarely bestowed laurel whose recipients include luminaries such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Marianne Moore '09, Georgia O'Keeffe, Katharine Hepburn '28 and Martha Graham. In 1992, Columbia Teachers College awarded her the Cleveland E. Dodge Medal for Distinguished Contribution to Education.

After her graduation from Bryn Mawr in 1940, Thacher worked as a journalist, serving as an editorial researcher at Newsweek, and later writing and editing for the New York Times Magazine and Week in Review. While raising her family, she wrote book reviews for the Herald Tribune and, for several years, created the Christmas Children's Book List for Harper's magazine.

Many years later, she put her journalistic skills to work for the College when she interviewed Katharine Hepburn '28 for the Alumnae Bulletin in 1992. "I've never seen a writer so well-prepared and attentive to detail," says Bulletin editor Jan Trembley '75.

"She knew Kate [Hepburn] well and used to visit her often," says McPherson, "and she sometimes took me along, as she did on many fundraising trips when I was a fledgling administrator. She was fearless: she was so committed to the College and so certain of the worthiness of her cause that she would approach anyone. I learned the art of fundraising from Barbara Thacher."

Harris Wofford, too remembers her extraordinary commitment to Bryn Mawr.

"Barbara chaired the search committee that recruited me to the presidency of Bryn Mawr in 1969," he says. "At the time, I was the president of The College at Old Westbury, State University of New York. It was a turbulent year, and on the day she called, students had taken over the administration building. The Revolutionary Students' Committee answered the phone and gave her my home number.

"My wife answered the phone, and when Barbara explained why she was calling, she said, 'Mrs. Thacher, if my husband takes another job, I hope it will be running a country grocery, not any college.' Barbara said, 'Mrs. Wofford, Bryn Mawr is not any college.'

"She was a remarkably energetic and creative person, and she was clearly a leader on the board long before she was its president," Wofford says.

Thacher was also a veteran of the boards of several other nonprofit enterprises, including the Leake and Watts Children's Home, whose board she chaired; the New York City Board of Higher Education, of which she was the vice-chair, appointed by Mayor John Lindsey; the Public Social Policy Committee of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies; the New York Public Broadcasting station WNET-13; Sheltering Arms Children's Service; Istanbul Women's College; the Parents' League of New York; and Columbia University Teachers College, from which she earned a master's degree in history in 1965. She was an elder of the Riverdale Presbyterian Church, Bronx, N.Y., from 1958 to 1961.

An enthusiastic tennis player, Thacher was captain of the Bryn Mawr team as an undergraduate and remained a formidable opponent on the court until well into her 70s, her children report.

She was predeceased by her husband Thomas D. Thacher. She is survived by six children: Bryn Mawr alumnae Barbara Thacher Plimpton '64 and Elizabeth Thacher Hawn '68, Thomas D. Thacher II, Hugh A. Thacher, Peter A.Thacher, and Andrew Thacher; and seven grandchildren. A memorial service will be held at 4:30 p.m. on May 5 at the First Presbyterian Church of New Canaan, Conn. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent to Bryn Mawr College, Helfarian, 101 North Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-2899.

<Back to Bryn Mawr Now 2/22/2007

Next story>>