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The Liberator: Bill Grattan
By Thomas E. Cronin ’61
 Great teachers give us a sense not only of who they are, but more importantly, of who we are and who and what we might become. Great teachers unlock our energies, our imaginations, our curiosity and our minds.
Effective teachers pose compelling questions, teach us to reason, make us think about theories and counterfactuals—the what ifs. The best liberal arts college teachers also have an uncanny ability to step outside themselves and become liberating forces in our lives.
At its best, the liberal arts are a liberating and freeing learning journey; which help to liberate and free us from sloppy thinking, careless writing, hypocrisy, sentimentality, narrow-mindedness and prejudice.
History Professor William Grattan, who had received his degree from Holy Cross in 1938 before earning his Ph.D. in history at Harvard University, was the teacher who served for me as the most liberating and freeing teacher during my undergraduate years.
A native of Long Island, N.Y., Grattan taught at Holy Cross from 1946-1967. I took at least three of his courses on American history during the 1958 to 1961 period. I cannot now recall the exact topics of the courses, yet I believe they treated colonial history, American history through 1860 and the Civil War through World War II. We never seemed to get too close to the present.
Bill Grattan was a great teacher for several reasons. First, he had a passion for understanding American history. In his own very disciplined and organized way, he plainly enjoyed sharing what he had learned, and he valiantly tried to explicate the mixed success Americans and our leaders have had in living up to the ideals of constitutional democracy.
The first law of excellent teachers is to “know your stuff,” to be exceptionally well versed in your subject area. Professors must feel comfortable with a subject if they are going to succeed at explaining it. Students quite rightly expect teachers to serve as interpreters of what is known, important and fundamental. Bill Grattan did this superbly. He brought his subject alive, and he made us think, he made us reconsider the myths of the American character, and he made us reflect on the promise of the American experiment.
Grattan was successful as well because he was always splendidly organized. He lived in the pre-Internet and PowerPoint days when, in classes of 30 to 40 or more students, the lecture format was the traditional means of instruction. His lectures were invariably well prepared and carefully, in fact meticulously, delivered. There was an occasional wry comment, or humorous Dorothy Parker aside on Harding or Coolidge, yet his were straightforward, lucid, compelling interpretive analyses of an era or a presidential administration, or a major war.
I admired the clarity and careful reasoning of his presentations. Good teachers raise a lot of questions, and Professor Grattan regularly did this. He taught up, not down. Covering the material, which he always did well, was never as important, or so I detected, as getting us to explore the tensions and paradoxes and to examine the key assumptions and values.
Finally, Bill Grattan was a superb professor because he was patient—he listened to our often dumb questions—and was always available if we needed extra help or just had additional questions. I was impressed that he was always 10 minutes or so early for class; he would stand outside the room as if to signal that he was willing to offer advice or explain something again that may have been unclear during the previous class session. He would linger, too, after his lecture was over, for the same reasons.
Great teachers love their subject and share that enthusiasm with their students. They care about their students and feel privileged to teach. They view learning as a verb rather than a noun, not as neatly packaged facts but as an ongoing process of discovery. Great teachers are always getting students to ask a lot of questions. Bill Grattan was most assuredly that kind of teacher.
I remember working on a research paper about Woodrow Wilson for one of his courses. It was the most ambitious paper I had ever undertaken. His encouragement meant a lot to me. His role model meant a lot to me and my fellow classmates. His was a quiet inspiration, yet it was exceptionally important at a turning point in my life.
With his help, I migrated west to Stanford University where I was soon enrolled in a Ph.D. program in political science, concentrating mainly on American politics and government. I would later become a college teacher and often thought about the Bill Grattan role model which was always a source of motivation.
I had looked forward to the time, after I had completed my Ph.D., when I could visit with him back in Worcester to tell him in person how much he had meant to me and how greatly I valued his teaching, advising and mentoring. Sadly, I never had that privilege, for Bill Grattan passed away rather suddenly and far too prematurely while I was finishing up my doctoral work and while he was a young 51 years old.
Bill Grattan was a great teacher and hundreds of us in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, who were privileged to have had him as our American history professor, remain profoundly in his debt for his liberating survey courses on the ideals and realities of American constitutional and political history.
Thomas Cronin ’61, is president of Whitman College, a liberal arts college in Walla Walla, Wash. He is the author, co-editor or editor of 12 books on American government or public policy including: The Paradoxes of the American Presidency (Oxford University Press, 2004) and Direct Democracy: The Politics of Initiative, Referendum and Recall (Harvard University Press, 1989).
More essays:
Above and Beyond the Call: Peter Parsons
A Constant Revelation: Thomas Lawler
The Critical Questions: William Morse
"You can always work even harder": Rev. Henry E. Bean, S.J.
The Potential This Day May Hold: Helen Whall
Always Be Open to the Possibilities: Ogretta McNeil
The Liberator: Bill Grattan
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