GEORGE F. DRURY

BROOKSVILLE – George F. Drury, philosopher and teacher, and a founding and sustaining force in the movement for democratically based education from the mid-1940s to his retirement in 1970, died Thursday, May 13, 2010, in Ellsworth. He was 92 years old. The cause was respiratory arrest, his wife said. He was born in 1917, in St. Louis. Mr. Drury grew up in Chicago, where he first pursued studies for the Catholic priesthood and then theology, graduating from St. Mary of the Lake College. At the time, an eloquent auxiliary bishop, Bernard Sheil, had begun speaking out on social issues such as racism, poverty and the rights of workers in an effort to counteract the fascism developing among American Catholics falling under the widening influence of the popular radio priest Father Charles E. Coughlin of Detroit. Bishop Sheil chose Mr. Drury to fashion an educational program that would fight these pernicious broadcasts. Together, the bishop and he established the Sheil School of Social Studies, a strikingly successful effort, attracting a wide response from students and volunteer faculty, as well as prominent speakers deeply concerned about the attractions of a social philosophy diametrically opposed to the democratic tradition of the country and the teachings of the church. Mr. Drury directed the school from 1943 to 1946. An account of Mr. Drury’s work with the Sheil School is included in Steven M. Avella’s This Confident Church: Catholic Leadership and Life in Chicago, 1940-1965. Mr. Drury left Chicago in 1959, having completed a master’s degree at Loyola University, where he also taught for 10 years. He received his doctorate degree from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Richard P. McKeon. In that year, at the invitation of a close friend who had been invited to chair the Science of Society division of a college in the process of being created at Wayne State University, Detroit, which had at the time a student population of 33,000, Mr. Drury joined the charter faculty of Monteith College – the college helped by the Ford Foundation – to see if “a small high-demand college for working class students in the context of a large urban university” could succeed. This year, surviving students and faculty celebrated the 50th anniversary of the college’s founding – for 10 years it had succeeded brilliantly in educating the sons and daughters of working Detroit, creating a whole new generation of citizens who were first generation graduates. Mr. Drury and his colleagues succeeded in garnering the trust and confidence of their students, whose lives were greatly challenged by a decade marked by the war in Vietnam and, for them, the destruction wrought by the riots of 1967. Mr. Drury was cited by his chairman, Professor Sally W. Cassidy, for his “uncanny ability to help students to unlock the fetters of their minds and to use their new-found freedom with increasing skill, discipline and concern for others.” In 1971 the State University of New York was undertaking to found Empire State College. Friends with whom George Drury had been meeting throughout the years, in connection with the Council for the Advancement of Small Colleges, were much involved with the planning of this new mentor-based college. They invited him to participate, and he went to Rochester, N.Y., where he was assigned to Genesee Valley Center. From 1972 to 1987 he worked with students in programs, including philosophy, literature and social science. With his colleagues he strove to preserve as much as possible of the initiative, which inserting the college into State University of New York represented. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Genesee Learning Center, the college published Mr. Drury’s Prince Street Dialogues, a well-received collection of dialogues about the college and its progressive approach to education. Mr. Drury’s daughter, Finvola, AIDS scientist and health worker, died in 1991. He is survived by his wife of 62 years, the poet, Finvola Drury of Brooksville; by his son, George and by his daughter-in-law, Kathy Cowan, of Chicago. Those who desire may make a contribution to Hospice of Hancock County, 14 McKenzie Ave., Ellsworth, ME 04605. A memorial service will be held at a later date. Condolences may be expressed at www.jordanfernald.com.