Editor’s note: Check out the video clip from “Unsolved Mysteries” at the end of this post.
Words can’t do justice to the amazing arc of Stephan Ross’s life.
So it was fitting that those who gathered at Plainfield’s Goddard College Sunday to honor the 1959 graduate, a Holocaust survivor and pioneer in social justice, gave him a long, heartfelt standing ovation that spoke volumes.
Ross was at Goddard to be honored with the college’s first Presidential Award for Activism, given at the Sunday graduation for the Masters in Psychology and Counseling Program. It was a day of congratulation, celebration, heartfelt emotion and tears for eight new graduates, made all the more poignant by the presence of a man whose career traversed the same field, and so much more.
The unspeakable horrors Ross survived as a Polish Jew in World War II, and his unusual path to America and to this small progressive college in northern Vermont, together with the relentless passion he showed for justice and activism as a licensed psychologist and social worker helping underprivileged youth, made him the ideal person to embody the core mission and values of Goddard, said President Barbara Vacarr.
“This is a man who has suffered more than most of us can ever imagine, and what he has done with his life since is nothing short of extraordinary,” said Vacarr.
The public recognition of Ross as a distinguished Goddard alumnus comes as the college approaches its 150th anniversary in 2013. Goddard College, begun as Goddard Seminary, is a pioneer in offering adult-degree programs, and now specializes in M.A., M.F.A., B.A. and B.F.A. low-residency education.
Vacarr, who came to Goddard from a 23-year career at Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass., a year ago, discovered Ross’ story as the school conducts an extensive retrospective of the students and faculty that have shaped its past.
Ross, who is 80 and slightly stooped but speaks with a strong and demonstrative voice, told the gathering Goddard was instrumental in preparing him for his mission in life, and in giving him the family he lost in Nazi Germany in World War II. His parents, a brother and five sisters were all victims of the Nazi concentration camps.
“How fortunate we all are to have a college like Goddard,” he told the gathering, saying it represents “intellectual, intelligent people to go out and make a difference in the world.”
“Thank you all very much. This is my family,” he said.
Born Szmulek Rozental in Lodz, Poland, in 1931, Ross endured 10 concentration camps in five years between 1940 and 1945. Vacarr told the audience in her address that Ross at one point had his back broken by the guards because he asked for some food, and also contracted tuberculosis. At the age of 13, he was liberated from Dachau by American troops, saving him from the death sentence imposed on millions of others, and on the rest of his family.
He arrived in the United States in 1948 through the U.S. Government Committee for WWII Orphaned Children, instilled with an almost incomprehensible drive to better himself and the world.
“My mother said some day I will be a big man. What she meant was, I will get an education,” Ross explained.
And what an education it turned out to be, against all odds.
After attending high school in Massachusetts, he was drafted into the Army and served in Korea. When he got out and returned to Boston, Ross said a counselor helping him go to school on the GI Bill told him about Goddard and that some veterans were doing well there. And so he came up to Vermont sight unseen, joining a class of just 12 people. Goddard, founded by progressive educator and founding President Royce “Tim” Pitkin, gave him a chance, and he ran with it, further than anyone could imagine.
The reason I feel so wonderful about Goddard is, I came here, and they helped me.”
– Stephan Ross
“I wanted to get an education by hook or by crook; I had to do it,” he said.
Ross recalls the tuition as being around $2,600 back then, but even that was a stretch for him. In summer, he worked 18-hour days at a gas station on Cape Cod to earn money for school. He was so poor, he said, that “I didn’t have 27 cents to buy a gallon of gas.”
But he had plenty of time to give to others and begin the activism that is his trademark, first locally at Goddard in Plainfield, then later in Boston helping young people.
Concerned about the safety of the structures that served as Goddard’s dorms — converted wooden barns — he helped found the Plainfield Fire Department and purchase the first fire engine and organize training drills.
And so a Polish Holocaust survivor from Boston made a mark on the tiny community of Plainfield, Vt. Asked afterwards why he should care about a local fire department, he replied simply: “I was scared. I saw bombs, I saw fires.”
Ross said the kindness of his classmates sticks with him to this day. Learning English on the fly, they helped him with his papers and his homework and his confidence, describing Goddard as a place that “opened hearts.”
“The reason I feel so wonderful about Goddard is, I came here, and they helped me,” he said.
Ross persevered and earned his bachelor’s degree in sociology from Goddard in 1959 — and then came another twist in his remarkable life.
Because he could not afford his diploma or a cap and gown and was too embarrassed to tell anyone, he left Goddard without attending his graduation.
Ross then went to Boston University to earn a masters in psychology. It was a financial struggle. After paying tuition, he said, “I didn’t have enough money left to rent an apartment.” Unfazed, he bought a car for $50, and then lived in it while getting his degree — all through the Boston winters.
“It was very hard to do,” he said.
Degree achieved, he began a 50-year-long career counseling disadvantaged youth in Boston. As a psychologist, he worked for the city of Boston for four decades, providing guidance and clinical services to inner-city under-privileged youth and families, helping them gain access to a wide array of health and social services.
One of his many noteworthy achievements was arranging for the first fee waivers to the College Board exams for low-income students. Thanks in no small part to his efforts, fee waivers are now a nationwide program of the College Board.
Ross is also founder of the New England Holocaust Memorial and Liberators Monument. Working with then-Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, he raised more than $14 million from public and private entities to erect them, and since 1995, the two memorials have stood together near Faneuil Hall and Boston’s historic Freedom Trail.
How Ross ended up back at Goddard is its own tale.
After learning last summer about Ross’ background and that he never got his diploma, President Vacarr contacted Ross and went to Boston personally to deliver his diploma and a bound copy of his thesis, which was about the challenges faced by disadvantaged youth.
Sunday, Ross, escorted by his son Michael, a Boston city councilor, came back to Goddard 52 years after he missed his graduation, excited as any of the other graduates on this day. So did his roommate, Carl Hilgenberg of Littleton, N.H., who had heard about the event,
Like Ross, he said he was another unlikely student that Goddard opened its doors to.
“I visited 15 colleges. They all turned me down. When I got here, I said, by God, I’ve made my last visit,” he joked as he and Ross toured their old dorm building, which is being renovated, looking for their room.
Finding it, Ross recalled hoarding food from the cafeteria in a bird feeder outside his dorm window, still scarred by the hunger of his Holocaust experience.
But at Goddard, he said, he realized he had found a place that he could call home and the family and friends he lost in the concentration camp, along with the “foundation” that spurred his career trying to help others.
“You can’t have a better life than I had here,” he said.