Observations: John Altman
I first met John almost 40 years ago. John was visiting Oxford, and a friend of his brought him over to my house where I was hosting a faculty gathering.
Last week, Miami University dedicated the recently-renovated Bachelor Hall, which houses a number of humanities departments and the wonderfully-successful Altman Institute for the Humanities. There was a huge turnout for the dedication of this now-beautiful building – and then a formal dedication of the institute that owes so much to John Altman.
John, a Miami University graduate, who served a term on the Miami Board of Trustees, is a kind of renaissance man. A hugely successful businessman, he minored in the classics at Miami, has a theological degree and did a stint at the Harvard Business School. His generosity has been extraordinary; his friendship even more important to me. We all owe him a tremendous vote of thanks for everything he has done.
I first met John almost 40 years ago. John was visiting Oxford, and a friend of his brought him over to my house where I was hosting a faculty gathering.
Later, John returned to Oxford, and began frequenting the Round Table, in the old 1809 Room in the Shriver Center, where faculty who didn’t have a lunch partner gathered to schmooze and eat. At one point, regulars at the Round Table went out to dinner in Cincinnati, and somehow, John, my wife Sara and I ended up at one table together. We all ordered a single-malt Scotch, then another and another. By the evening’s end, we were fast friends.
Fast forward another decade or two. Dean Karen Schilling asked me to create a humanities center in the College of Arts and Science. I bumped into John, told him what I was doing and he said, “Let’s talk.”
It turned out that some years before, I had written a $500,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant for a humanities program. John had contributed the matching funds to make it work. The program was enormously successful for one year, and then the college simply let it die. The money accrued interest, became a healthy sum and finally I was authorized to ask John if we could use that money for our new humanities center. He agreed. And that way, Miami’s Humanities Center was born.
The center got off to a good start. The most important part was something we called the Altman Scholar’s Program. It freed a half-dozen faculty members to spend the year in intensive discussions around a common theme. John watched what was going on, wrote an occasional piece in our newsletter, and, much to my delight, was pleased with what he saw.
After about five years, the Humanities Center was firmly established.
As my retirement loomed, I was ready to step down. In the most important step we ever took, the dean appointed Tim Melley, of the English Department, to direct the center. And under his extraordinary leadership, the Humanities Center has grown and become one of the very best in the United States.
John has continued to be enormously supportive. He has always been tremendously generous – he helped fund such projects as the pavilion uptown and the covered bridge – and the Humanities Center, now called the Altman Institute for the Humanities, has flourished beyond our wildest dreams.
The dedication of the Altman Institute, like the dedication of Bachelor Hall, was a wonderful affair. John himself, now in his mid-80s, gave a sparkling talk that underscored the value of the humanities in everything we have been trying to do.
Allan M. Winkler is a University Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Miami University, where he taught for three decades. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Oxford Free Press.
