Necrology
Walter “Lawry” Lawrence Gulick, Jr. '52
Jul. 4, 1927-Jan. 28, 2023
Walter “Lawry” Lawrence Gulick, Jr. ’52, P’77, died on Jan. 28, 2023, in West Grove, Pa. Born in Summit, N.J., on July 4, 1927, and raised first in East Orange and then Upper Montclair, he graduated from Montclair High School in 1944. He then studied at the largest merchant marine training station during World War II, the Sheepshead Bay Maritime Training Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., to earn certification as an engineer on merchant ships transporting troops and war materiel from the East Coast to Europe.
On Sept. 1, 1945, Lawry enlisted in the U.S. Army, and after completing parachute training and being promoted to sergeant, he was assigned to the 11th Airborne Division and served during the postwar occupation of Japan. Discharged on Dec. 27, 1947, he matriculated at Hamilton in September 1948.
On the Hill, he was a member of Theta Delta Chi fraternity, serving at different times as house steward, house manager, and as the senior member of its executive board. He majored in both music and psychology, ran cross country during his first year, and was on the track team during both his freshman and sophomore years. He was on the Chapel Board during his sophomore and junior years. Lawry was a dedicated singer and naturally joined the College Choir soon after his arrival, staying on all four years and managing it in his final year.
But beyond that, he was one of three choir members who greatly and permanently enhanced musical culture on the Hill. As he recalled in 2001, it was following a rehearsal in late October 1950 during an early fall snowstorm when he and two classmates, Warren Dodson and Addison Keeler, came up with the idea of forming an informal singing group separate from the choir. Who first conceived the idea is uncertain, but they agreed the group would consist of eight singers and would be called The Buffers, a winking reference to one of the two College colors. Lawry organized the group and became its first musical director.
The newly appointed choir director, John Baldwin, was supportive, and encouraged the founders to connect the group to the choir, which could be a source of new talent to succeed graduating singers. Thereafter, choir members often became Buffers. The group proved to be the first of four innovations at Hamilton for which Lawry was at least partially responsible.
Also in 1950, Lawry got on a chartered bus with fellow students for a mixer at Keuka College. As it happened, he was the last one off the bus and met a young woman who was the last in the group of Keuka students to be paired up. Last or not, the partnership worked out very well, and on Oct. 18, 1952, he married his former date, Winifred Bourn Frazee, in Ridgewood, N.J. They were together for 70 years and would have two sons and a daughter.
While on the Hill, Lawry built a record of distinguished academic achievement. Ranked 16th in his class of 120 students at the end of his junior year, he rose to eighth halfway through his final year. On Class & Charter Day in 1952, he was awarded the Nelson Clark Dale, Jr. Prize in Music, subsequently graduated with honors in both music and psychology, and was admitted to Phi Beta Kappa.
From Hamilton, Lawry moved to the DuPont Corp. in Wilmington, Del., where for one year he was employed as an industrial psychologist. In the fall of 1953, he began graduate studies in experimental psychology at the University of Delaware, where, in May 1954, he was initiated into Delaware’s chapter of Psi Chi, the international honor society in psychology. That fall he was elected president of his chapter, and, while completing his master’s degree in the spring of 1955, received the chapter’s first service award.
That fall he entered Princeton University, where he began teaching while continuing his study of expository psychology and completed his doctorate in just two years. His dissertation was on “The Effects of Hypoxemia Upon the Electrical Response of the Cochlea.” In recognition of his academic achievements, Lawry was admitted to Sigma Xi, the scientific research honor society, in what might be termed the third of a trifecta of honor society memberships that were a testament to his academic achievement.
His academic career began at the University of Delaware where he joined the Psychology Department in 1957, remaining there until 1965. Appointed an assistant professor on his arrival, he rose to full professor. During this period, he was introduced to educational administration when he was appointed chair of the department. He also began to build a reputation as a gifted teacher and thereafter made it a point to teach at least one class each academic year.
In 1965, Lawry and his family moved to Hanover, N.H., where he became the Class of 1925 Professor of Psychology and, in 1967, chair of the department at Dartmouth College. In 1968, along with 10 faculty colleagues, he was the recipient of an honorary master’s degree conferred by the college’s president. In addition, Lawry was a productive scholar, publishing numerous articles as well as a textbook closely related to his research: Hearing: Physiology and Psychophysics (Oxford University Press, 1971). It was the first of his three textbooks in the field.
In 1975, he returned to the Hill as dean of the College, succeeding Professor of English Dwight Lindley ’42. In time, Lawry would introduce three innovations to Hamilton: one ceremonial and two academically substantive.
The first he conceived in December of that year: to provide each graduate with a memento of his years at Hamilton. Collaborating with an old friend, a wood carver who lived in Vermont, he imagined a walking stick topped with a tricorn hat in honor of the Continental Army and its drill master, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who had laid the cornerstone for the Hamilton-Oneida Academy in 1794. On the crown of the hat appeared the year of graduation. The Class of 1976 was the first to receive these walking sticks, and their spontaneous response was to tap their canes in unison to the rhythm of the recessional at the end of Commencement exercises. The tradition continues to this day.
That same year and with the support of the faculty, Lawry established the Senior Fellowship Program. Highly motivated students conduct a year-long research project culminating in a document comparable to a master’s thesis, one that demonstrates their mastery of a significant body of scholarly literature related to the subject of their research. In addition, the fellows sit for an oral defense in the presence of three examiners, two of whom must be Hamilton faculty. They then present a public lecture on their research. In a number of instances, the fellows collaborate closely with a faculty mentor, thus deriving even greater benefit from their engagement with their chosen subject. In addition to creating this program, Lawry made a substantial donation to the College to endow it.
Lawry resigned as dean in 1979, the year after Hamilton and Kirkland College merged. During his four years in the role, he fully immersed himself in academic life on the Hill as an instructor and scholar. In 1976, Oxford University Press published his second textbook, this one written in collaboration with Robert W. Lawson: Human Stereopsis: A Psychophysical Approach. (“Stereopsis” refers to our ability to see the world in three dimensions.) He taught courses in psychology and was undoubtedly instrumental in facilitating the transition from two colleges into one. In 1979, he was appointed as the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor, an award intended to offer support and encouragement to a faculty member who has demonstrated “enthusiasm for learning, commitment to teaching, and sincere personal interest in students,” qualities for which Lawry was frequently honored. Concurrently, his wife Win became assistant director of Communications and Development.
In 1981, Lawry was named president of St. Lawrence University. Even as he was settling into that position, he remained active at Hamilton. In 1982, he made his third contribution to the College’s life by establishing the B.F. Skinner Prize in honor of the noted psychologist, Class of 1926, to be awarded on Class & Charter Day to a senior who excelled in psychological research.
Lawry served as St. Lawrence’s president until 1987, after which he and Win returned to Newark and where he was appointed the University of Delaware’s resident scholar in psychology. He continued to conduct research and teach. In 1989, in collaboration with George Gescheider of Hamilton’s Psychology Department and Robert Frisina, he published a third textbook on the field of hearing: Hearing: Physiological Acoustics, Neural Coding, and Psychoacoustics. The university noted the continuing high quality of his teaching when, in 1992, it conferred upon him an outstanding teacher award.
Lawry retired in 2003 and enjoyed many interests outside of academic life. He had been a sailor since childhood, first along the Jersey Shore and during his years at Dartmouth on Lake Winnipesaukee. Later, he sailed out of Marion, Mass., on Buzzards Bay. Joined by colleagues in academia and friends, he traveled up the coast to Maine and other destinations closer to port. He navigated three sailing vessels over the years: Styx, Wanderer, and Evening Star.
Among his other accomplishments, Lawry’s interest in choirs continued after Hamilton. He composed vocal music, kept singing, and also played the piano and the accordion. He was a woodworker who built furniture and was instrumental in the creation of a woodworking shop at the Jenner’s Pond retirement community to which he and Win moved in 2003. A lifelong love of poetry, and in particular the English Romantic poets, continued to play a role in his life and inspired him to compose his own poems, some of which he published. If that were not enough, Lawry also co-authored two detective novels.
His time on the Hill as a student, a faculty member, and as dean was very important to Lawry, but he also supported the College as an alumnus. In addition to being a generous benefactor, he was a member of his class, reunion planning, and reunion gift committees; on the Alumni Council; a volunteer for the Career Center; and a charter member of the Joel Bristol Associates. The College took note and, in 1995, conferred upon him the Alumni Achievement Award. In 2017, he received the Bell Ringer Award, the College’s highest volunteer award.
Walter “Lawry” L. Gulick, Jr. was predeceased by his wife. He is survived by three children, including Hans Gulick ’77, five grandchildren, one great-granddaughter, and a cousin, Jason Parker Brown ’09.
