FAMILIAR RELATIONS> The Loyal Alumnus and the Focused Philanthropist, Page 4

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The experiment in international study appealed strongly to Pierre du Pont’s wife, Alice, who won over her husband. A man of unusually methodical discipline in the expenditure of money, Pierre finally overcame his fear that foreign study might be icing on an incomplete cake. With his support, the novel program was launched. In July 1923, eight excited young men, all but one students at the University of Delaware, embarked on the steamship Rochambeau for a year in France, accompanied by Professor Kirkbride.

On the eve of their departure, Pierre du Pont met them in New York and treated them to dinner and a show. He even sent flowers to the ship. Newspapers in France and the United States ran complimentary articles about the foreign study plan, which drew favorable attention to the University and paved the way for Pierre du Pont’s elevation to become an officer of the French Legion of Honor.

In the years that followed, Pierre du Pont continued to support the foreign study program financially and to involve himself in its development. He maintained a steady triangular correspondence with Walter Hullihen and Raymond Kirkbride. Sometimes, he found it necessary to hold back the irrepressible Kirkbride, as when the professor expressed a Napoleonic desire to assert the University of Delaware’s dominance over other American universities that might undertake similar programs. "While Delaware is entitled to some pride for having started the movement," Pierre wrote in avuncular style, "I do not think that it is proper to seek a monopoly on this form of training, particularly as we have funds insufficient for proper development."[14] As the years went by, the program grew to include as many as sixty students, most of them from universities and colleges outside of Delaware. Du Pont provided up to $10,000 each year through Service Citizens, enough to make up the difference between the income from student fees and the true cost. In 1926, when Joseph Odell visited France he enthusiastically reported back to Pierre that the program was far more important in the eyes of French leaders than anyone in the United States might imagine.[15]

Pierre du Pont did not doubt the value of the foreign study program, but he was unwilling to be its sole benefactor. As his contributions became smaller, others came forward to pick up the slack, among them was Senator T. Coleman du Pont. Pierre never abandoned his interest in the program, nor in its earnest young champion. In 1928, Raymond Kirkbride contracted a fatal disease that took his life in 1929. During the period of Kirkbride’s illness, Pierre du Pont paid the young professor’s hospital and doctor’s bills and, when he died, paid for his funeral.

Pierre du Pont’s conscientious, rational approach to philanthropy had a great impact on those around him. In January 1949, when Pierre and H. Rodney Sharp were advanced in years, Sharp sent his brother-in-law a reflective letter that concluded, "If I have been able to bring happiness into the lives of others, it was you who first showed me the way."[16]

By the end of World War I, Rodney Sharp and his wife, Isabella, had attained a level of wealth that far exceeded their expectations when they had married in 1908. As a result, H. Rodney Sharp was now able to provide major funds to support good causes that interested him, and the University of Delaware remained by far the most prominent of these. H. Rodney Sharp wished to preserve the sense of a close, shared community that he had experienced as a student in the late 1890s for the current students and faculty of Delaware College. Believing that a college education consisted of more than could be learned from books, lectures, and laboratory work, he decided to give "the College," as he continued from long habit to call it, a building that could serve as its assembly hall, concert hall, and theatre. In 1927, he offered to build an auditorium to seat one thousand persons to be located at the western cross-axis of the Mall. He named the building Mitchell Hall to honor Samuel Chiles Mitchell, the President with whom Sharp had worked so closely and harmoniously in the heady days when they were planning the new campus.

Charles Z. Klauder’s sophisticated design for Mitchell Hall included a domed central space over the auditorium, a balcony that ran along three sides, and a handsome vestibule. The three doors that gave entry to the building from the front were surrounded by carved white marble. H. Rodney Sharp paid close attention to the planning and execution of every detail that went into the building--the fabric material chosen for the auditorium seats, the heating system, even the choice of marble for the bathrooms. The stage was designed to accommodate a large organ, valued at $100,000, that Pierre du Pont donated to make way for a new organ at his Longwood Gardens estate. On the day that Mitchell Hall was dedicated, H. Rodney Sharp held a luncheon for 250 guests, including many members of the du Pont family, in the refectory in Old College. Afterward, his guests gathered in the new auditorium to enjoy a series of brief performances that demonstrated the building’s versatility. These included an organ recital, a one-act play written and acted by students from the Men’s College, and a concert by the Women’s College Glee Club. The Student Council presented H. Rodney Sharp with a bronze plaque, now affixed to the front of the building, proclaiming that Mitchell Hall was "The Gift of H. Rodney Sharp, Class of 1900."

As Rodney Sharp had anticipated, his magnificent gift became a centerpiece of life at the University, a place where students from the Men’s and Women’s Colleges worked together to produce theatrical and musical events, where members of the entire campus community gathered for meetings and ceremonies, and where citizens, students, and University employees attended concerts and plays presented by outstanding professional players.

Although Mitchell Hall remains the most visible sign of Rodney Sharp’s life-long commitment to his beloved College, it was but one among many of his significant gifts. He never stopped thinking about how he might assist the development of the University. During his world tour in 1921-22, Sharp took time to visit the studio of sculptor Eugenio Battiglia in Florence, Italy, from whom he ordered a large sculpture of a Greek discus thrower, or Discobolus, for the University. Chiseled from Carrara marble, Discobolus arrived by steamship in 1923 and was transferred to the gymnasium of the Men’s College. It now stands in the vestibule of the R.R.M. Carpenter Sports Building.