Feb 23, 2006 - Claremont, Calif. -

Professor of Literature Emeritus William H. Davenport, a member of the founding faculty at Harvey Mudd College and chair of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences for many years, died in Claremont on Tuesday, Feb. 21. He was 97 years old.

Davenport was among the "Seven Samurai," as they affectionately became known by students, who were recruited by founding President Joseph B. Platt to constitute the first faculty at the college when it opened to students in 1957. He served as chair of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences from 1957 to 1968 and retired in 1973.

He is survived by his daughters Linda Davenport and Marsha Davenport Gokey, one grandchild and three great-grandchildren. He will be buried in Pennsylvania alongside his wife Frances Isobel, who died in 2002. There will be a visitation at Todd Memorial Chapel, 570 N. Garey Ave., Pomona, from noon to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 25. For more information, call (909) 622-1217.

As one of the original members of the faculty in a small college, Davenport assumed many duties in addition to teaching, including serving as dean of student counseling. He was also the primary author of the brochure "Make No Mistake," which served as the case statement for the college's first capital campaign, Impact/72, which sought to raise $18.75 million between 1965 and 1972. After his retirement, he was a long-time supporter of the college through his membership in the Galileo Society.

In Platt's presidential memoir "Harvey Mudd College: The First Twenty Years," Davenport reflected on his decision to leave his position as chair of the Department of English at the University of Southern California (USC) for the fledgling Harvey Mudd College:

During Christmas vacation 1956, my friend Paul Bowerman of the Caltech faculty dropped in to chew the fat and have a beer; during the course of the small talk he let on as how Harvey Mudd College was looking for somebody in English and that the gossip was that they were paying full professors between $10,000 and $15,000. I got on the phone to Joe Platt, who suggested an interview the next morning. We talked about two hours, Joe went on the road, I thrashed around for a few weeks, trying to weigh a chairmanship in a large university, tenure, a sabbatical, nineteen years' service to one institution, against a new school, Claremont, intellectual climate, and a decent faculty-trustee-student relationship -- and decided to plunge.... Joe returned, laid it on the line, and the rest you know. Incidentally, the yarn about salary turned out to be just that, a yarn.

Jeffrey Groves, current chair of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and professor of literature, inherited from Davenport the Shakespeare course that he now teaches and which produces a play in the courtyard of Thomas-Garrett Hall each spring. He said of Davenport, "He was a very generous person. He very kindly gave me much of his collection of books when I was a 'young pup' in the department."

Richard Olson '62, professor of history and Willard G. Keith, Jr. Fellow in the Humanities, recalls his days on campus as a student when Davenport chaired the department: "He was invited to come because he had been working on the relationships between science, engineering and literature. He and Daniel Rosenthal, an engineer from UCLA, developed an anthology, 'Engineering: Its Role and Function in Human Society' that was directed at the mission statement of the college.

"He also served as dean of the college in the earliest years and was responsible for convincing agents of the FBI not to arrest one of the students who had been charged with blowing up one his neighbors' mailboxes. An immensely popular teacher, he sometimes slipped up and referred to the Humanities and Social Sciences Department as the English Department, which irritated John Ray, a social-scientific historian of technology, to no end."