New Counselors

For twelve months, individual U.S. citizens with an interest in such matters had been mailing in new nominations for the nation's most illustrious society: the Hall of Fame on New York University's Bronx campus. The nominations this year ranged from cabin (Henry David Thoreau) to White House (Woodrow Wilson), from the field of battle (Stonewall Jackson) to the classroom (Lincoln's teacher, Menton Graham). By the time the nominations closed, N.Y.U. had 186 new candidates.

Every five years for half a century, N.Y.U. has invited the public to submit new names in this fashion in fulfillment of the idea of N.Y.U. Chancellor Henry M. MacCracken for a place where succeeding generations of Americans could go and "take counsel ... of Wisdom, Beauty, Power."

Hall of Fame candidates have no easy time winning election. To be eligible, they must have been dead for at least 25 years; once nominated, their names must pass muster before N.Y.U.'s faculty senate. Finally a group of 100 electors--authors, statesmen, scientists, artists and college presidents--cast their votes. In any election, no more than seven men & women can count on winning a niche and a bust in the Hall's colonnade.

In 50 years, only nine U.S. Presidents have made the grade. Authors have done better: there are 18 of them. Unless he was a philanthropist (e.g., Manhattan's Peter Cooper), a businessman seems to stand a poor chance. The U.S. has apparently produced only one composer worthy of the honor (Stephen Foster), one sculptor (Augustus Saint-Gaudens), two painters (Gilbert Stuart, James McNeill Whistler), one actor and one actress (Edwin Booth and Charlotte Cushman) and one explorer (Daniel Boone).

The Navy has furnished John Paul Jones and David Farragut; the Army, Grant, Lee and Sherman. There are seven scientists, four inventors, a handful of judges and educators--77 men & women in all.

Last week, the electors made it 83. This time, they passed up such celebrities as Thoreau, Melville, Emily Dickinson, William James, Stonewall Jackson, Admirals Dewey and Peary, Pocahontas, Paul Revere and General Lafayette. But they did elect two more U.S. Presidents--Wood-row Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt.They picked the Hall's eighth woman (Feminist Susan B. Anthony), its eighth scientist (Mathematician-Physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs) and its fifth inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. The new member with the most votes: Dr. William Gorgas, Army major general who stamped out yellow fever in Panama, to open the way for the building of the canal.

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