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In Afteryears…
Life with a Father of the Yale Alumni Magazine
February 1998
by George Parmly Day, Class of 1897
Written in 1922 on the occasion of Day’s 25th reunion.
 George Parmly Day
as a senior. |
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In 1907, I became interested with my brother Clarence and Ed Oviatt, Class of 1896, in helping to organize the Yale Publishing Association. This subsequently took over the Yale Alumni Weekly which my brother Clarence had acquired and carried until it could stand on its own feet, and also the old Yale Review. The following year, while still engaged in business in New York, I founded, with the approval of the Yale Corporation, a new enterprise known as the Yale University Press to publish books sanctioned by the University. Some day I would like to write in detail the story of the beginning of this project, which from its name might have been supposed to be a fully staffed department of the University, but which was in reality for a long time carried on by my wife, her secretary, and myself, after regular business hours in Wall Street, in an uptown office, approximately eight by ten, or perhaps ten by twelve feet. However, the world didn’t realize this; the Oxford University Press was glad to associate itself with us as our British representatives; and in 1909 we were already on the way to doing some worthwhile things for Yale in this, for it, new field.
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“In 1910, the papers said I ‘retired from Wall Street to go to New Haven and work for Yale.’” |
I have dwelt on this at some length, because I have always felt that the starting of the Yale University Press started me off on a new career. Naturally, my work for the press took me frequently to New Haven and put me somewhat in touch with others working there in the University. Then when Lee McClung resigned as treasurer of Yale University in the autumn of 1909, it was not perhaps strange, although it was a surprise to me, for President Hadley to ask me to become treasurer. I accepted in January 1910, and in May, 1910, “retired from active business in Wall Street,” as the newspapers said, “to go to New Haven and work for Yale,” where I can assure you I have since had to be more active than ever before in my young life. Of course I have been the busier, as well as the happier, because of having to continue to carry on also the work of the Yale University Press, which has grown to such an extent that—but there, if I wrote all that I would like to about this you would be charging me on the basis of advertising space for publishing my biography.
My travels and activities have since 1910 been bound up almost entirely with the University and the Press, although in the summer we do play a bit in other directions at a farm we own near Brattleboro, Vt. When I came back to Yale to become treasurer, I planned that I would work here in that position for five years, and I’m still at it.
I like to think that this is because there are still lots of things for me to do, rather than just because I like the work. It isn’t, however, a life position, and ought not to be, and now that we have a secretary of Yale University who graduated in 1921 there may be a plea for young blood in the treasurer’s office.
What I’ll do then I don’t know, although I think it would be rather good fun to run the country store up near our farm if this could be conducted on some other basis than the present cash and carry system, where the proprietor has to pay cash for his goods and then has to carry all his customers who are never by any chance in funds.  |
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