WEB UPDATE -- Aug. 25, 9:49 p.m.
David T. McLaughlin, a member of the Class of 1954 who, as Dartmouth's 14th president, oversaw a campus-wide building boom and enacted fundamental changes in the Dartmouth Plan, died Wednesday morning in the wilderness of Alaska while on a fishing trip with friends and his two grown sons.
The cause of McLaughlin's death was not immediately clear, although several people close to the retired president, who was 72, said he died of natural causes.
McLaughlin suffered a heart attack during the first year of his term and had a history of heart trouble, but was not generally regarded as being in poor health.
He was president from 1981 to 1987, and was known for a corporate approach to the job that was both a source of outside praise, particularly among alumni impressed with his fundraising prowess, as well as faculty criticism.
Indeed, McLaughlin's resume read largely like a roadmap through some of the most prominent destinations in corporate America. At the time of his death, he was a director of the media giant Viacom. He served as chief executive officer of Orion Safety Products from 1988 through 2000. Soon after retiring as president of the College, he joined the Aspen Institute, a leadership organization, serving first as its chairman from 1987 to 1988 and then as its president and chief executive from 1988 to 1997.
Before leaving his elected chairmanship on the College's Board of Trustees to assume Dartmouth's presidency, he had occupied the top position at Toro Manufacturing.
McLaughlin also presided over numerous nonprofit organizations during his professional career. From 2001 until this year, he served as chairman of the American Red Cross.
Current and former colleagues alike praised McLaughlin for his devotion to Dartmouth as an institution.
"Mr. McLaughlin dedicated so much of his life and considerable energy to Dartmouth and its people," current College President James Wright said Wednesday in a written statement. "His life was full, and, in the end, too short."
"I don't know if there are too many people who are as devoted to Dartmouth as he was," added McLaughlin's immediate successor, James O. Freedman. "He always furnished me with very great moral support during my time as president."
McLaughlin's efforts at building the campus infrastructure and strengthening the endowment charted the initial course for the College to head into the 21st century. Under his watch, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center was relocated to its current location in Lebanon, and the Berry Sports Center was erected, thanks to a generous donation from alumnus John W. Berry '44, who later provided funds for Berry Library.
Also constructed during McLaughlin's presidency were the Maxwell and Channing Cox apartments, located next to the River cluster, the Rockefeller Center and the Hood Museum. Faculty salaries increased 43 percent over a five-year period and the endowment grew to a new high of $521 million.
In addition, the creation of the Office of Residential Life and the Committee on Student Life were products of McLaughlin's tenure. An ad hoc committee he formed in the mid-1980s was designed to improve the quality of residential life at the College and counted among its members James Wright, who, as president, would later unveil the controversial Student Life Initiative in 1999.
McLaughlin also enacted important changes to the Dartmouth Plan in 1983, after it became obvious that the decade-old version was creating as many problems as it was solving. McLaughlin created a period of mandatory residence during freshman and senior years, increased the number of credits required for graduation from 33 to 35 and made the summer after sophomore year a required term.
While at Dartmouth's helm, however, McLaughlin sometimes drew more flak than praise.
Faculty members decried his lack of academic leadership -- the lifelong businessman had never earned a doctoral degree -- and at one point debated a no-confidence vote calling for his resignation.
In January 1985, an ad hoc committee formed by the faculty to examine the governance of the College released a report sharply criticizing McLaughlin's leadership style. A poll in The Dartmouth in April of that year found that more than three-quarters of the faculty faulted McLaughlin for a lack of intellectual leadership and mediocre defense of liberal arts.
It came as little wonder, then, when Dartmouth's Board of Trustees hired James O. Freedman, a lifelong academic who was the president of the University of Iowa, as the 15th President of the College. Chief among his mandates was these: to improve the intellectual atmosphere of a school that, at least among the college guidebooks, was regarded as among the least academically rigorous of the Ivies.
McLaughlin's problems had only deepened over his handling of an event that drew national attention -- a group of students associated with The Dartmouth Review, some of them wielding sledgehammers, attacked a shantytown that had been constructed on the Green to protest the apartheid regime in South Africa.
The uproar drew Dartmouth (and its president) into the national spotlight, and there was little surprise when McLaughlin announced in October 1986 that he was resigning.
There had been other tensions, too.
One especially marked point of contention was the reinstatement of the Reserve Officers Training Corps on campus.
In March 1985, McLaughlin and the Board of Trustees sanctioned the ROTC program on campus despite two separate votes by the faculty stating their opposition to the program.
The faculty reacted negatively to McLaughlin's decision and 52 professors immediately signed a letter warning a leadership crisis could develop.
But McLaughlin never publicly regretted the decision to institute ROTC, though he admitted later that "some of it could have been handled better."
His 1987 exit was met by widespread faculty approval, and students at the time noted that the McLaughlin era had shown them only that the administration neither considered their concerns nor acted decisively.
Still, in a 1995 interview with The Dartmouth, McLaughlin said he had very few regrets about his time in the presidency.
"My affection for the College is as great today as it ever was," he said. "I have a great attachment to it and a great affection for it ... I don't think the College ever leaves your consciousness in terms of your emotional attachment to it."
Religion professor Hans Penner, who was Dean of the Faculty during McLaughlin's presidency, noted in 1995 that McLaughlin was very supportive of the faculty, but the disagreement over ROTC "soured" the relationship.
"It was downhill from then on," Penner said. "In a way, it was unfortunate because the man really had the faculty at heart and had a deep commitment to the College as a past chairman of the board and as an alum."
History professor Charles Wood, who died Feb. 11, had described McLaughlin in 1995 as a "terribly nice person" who was "absolutely committed to Dartmouth and the whole idea of a liberal education."
Wood said McLaughlin's "blind spot" was that "he really didn't always understand exactly how an institution like Dartmouth functioned, and how the faculty was to be led was something that caused him a problem."
McLaughlin returned to the corporate world soon after.
At the time of his death, McLaughlin, a Dartmouth football wide receiver and one-time member of such student organizations as Phi Beta Kappa, the Green Key Society, Palaeopitus and Casque and Gauntlet, was writing a book about his life experiences.
The Grand Rapids, Mich., native, born March 16, 1932, is survived by his wife, Judith Ann, and their four children.
Staff writer Kaitlin Bell contributed to this report.
