Thank you for joining us today in paying tribute to Bruce Fraser. I am grateful to Chairman Leach for giving me the opportunity to talk about this long-time director who contributed so much not only to his own council but to the whole council community. Bruce believed to his core that the humanities were the lifeblood of our democracy, that the integration of the humanities into American public life was essential to our national health. And he spent his entire career acting on that belief.
Bruce's approach to humanities work was exacting. He set high standards for his council, their partner institutions and organizations, and their grantees, as well as for himself and his colleagues around the country. He consistently exhibited a stubborn insistence on excellence, a disdain for fuzzy thinking, a world-class wit and unyielding honesty. He constantly explored the frontiers of humanities work, looking for new ways to engage people. Several years ago, the Federation's national conference included a workshop session on new technologies. In an email message to his colleagues the week after the conference Bruce said, "I found the 'Virtual Place' session a true Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment, making absolutely clear to this confirmed book guy and techno-Luddite that I just had to get a handle on this new media movement and incorporate its possibilities into our programming in a far more comprehensive and sophisticated way than we've done so far. And I had to do it fast or we'd be so far behind on this stuff that we'd never catch up. My suspicion, based on the dumbstruck looks that seemed to characterize those departing the session, was that I was hardly alone." Catch up he did--in 2008, the Connecticut Humanities Council was awarded an NEH Digital Humanities start-up grant to support their online encyclopedia.
Bruce was forthright in his views, and his articulation of those views could be daunting. And yet, in the messages his colleagues exchanged in the days after we learned of his death, the word most frequently used to describe him was "generous." "Bruce has been generous beyond the call...," said one. And from another, "Bruce was so very generous in helping me when I first came to our council." Drawing on this generosity, Bruce embodied and significantly strengthened a long-standing council tradition of shared wisdom.
One of the great strengths of the state humanities councils is that at any given moment, there is some council out there whose board and staff members look around their state, identify a need, and conceive a program or an initiative or a new way of coming at an old problem that they believe will meet that need. They share what they have learned, and soon other councils around the country find that this program or initiative just might serve the citizens of their states as well.
In this tradition, Humanities Tennessee in 1989 (decades before the Big Read), recognized in their citizens a hunger for books and reading and interacting with authors and with each other and developed the Southern Festival of Books, gathering up a wide range of supporters, including local newspapers and other businesses, and forging a solid and productive partnership with Vanderbilt University. Today a dozen council-sponsored or supported statewide book festivals attract hundreds of thousands of citizens from Virginia to Montana.
A decade ago, the Georgia Humanities Council, realizing that the very diverse citizenry, flowing into the state from all corners of not just this country but the world, had little context for understanding the history and culture of their Georgia home. So the council joined with the University System of Georgia and the University of Georgia Press, among others, and in 2004 launched the New Georgia Encyclopedia, the first council-sponsored online state encyclopedia. Today, ten councils, many of them having consulted directly with the Georgia Humanities Council, have established or are supporting online state encyclopedias that provide invaluable resources for teachers and students, draw tourists, and educate the state's own citizens about their history and culture.
In 2003, the Illinois Humanities Council, acting on a desire to engage younger audiences in the humanities and drawing on the talents and energies of young scholars, initiated a program of text-based discussions through which young AmeriCorps service volunteers explored the complexities of service and the values underlying their own commitment to service. With two separate grants from the NEH, the Illinois council has extended the program to more than a dozen other councils and has expanded their offerings to provide regular training workshops for scholar-facilitators.
There are dozens of such examples. In this vibrant network of ideas and experience, the Connecticut council, under Bruce Fraser's leadership, has contributed its full measure-and more-of signature programs and expertise. The notable Connecticut achievements are too numerous to recount, so I will describe just a couple of Bruce's contributions that have left a permanent imprint on council thinking and activities.
The first is his success in securing state funding. As you know, the state humanities councils, unlike their state arts counterparts, are designated in the federal legislation not as state agencies but as independent nonprofit organizations. That word "humanities" already presents a challenge. Add the nonprofit status, and persuading state legislators to give you money becomes a major challenge. For Bruce, this simply added to the fun. He rolled up his sleeves, looked for the needs that no one else in the state was meeting, drew up a sophisticated plan for how the funds would be used, identified the key players in the legislature, and never let up. When he began to meet with success, he documented the steps the council had taken, gave presentations to his fellow state councils, built on his own successes, and served as a constant willing resource to his colleagues.
Perhaps the most striking achievements, and the most representative of Bruce's approach, were the result of his years of work with the history museum community in Connecticut. Last summer, that work culminated in the online Heritage Resource Center, a remarkably rich collection of resources designed to contribute to museum stabilization and growth. Development of that resource, Bruce told us, grew out of a decision a couple of years earlier to emphasize long-term organizational sustainability rather than traditional short-term program support in their grantmaking. But in fact the council's attention to the history museum community began years before that, with an unwavering commitment to research the needs of that community, offer grants for strategic planning, staff training, and other capacity-building activities, and doggedly pursue state funding to support this effort. Bruce didn't believe in one-time hit-or-miss grants. His mantra was, "If you aren't willing to stay in it for the long haul, don't get into it at all." It was a philosophy that has been tremendously beneficial to the cultural heritage community in Connecticut and that has been adopted by state councils across the nation, as they revise their grants programs to give priority to institutional advancement and stability.
For us in the Federation, Bruce was a model of community spirit and good citizenship. He served on the Federation board, he chaired committees and task forces, he gave panel presentations at conferences. He badgered his members of Congress relentlessly for funding increases for the humanities. He quietly but consistently, year after year, offered support and advice to new directors.
He did these things because he believed so fundamentally in the importance of a question I heard him articulate often: What do we owe to each other? It is a fundamental question for the humanities. Certainly it is the ultimate question for a community, or a democracy. For Bruce, sharing his knowledge with his fellow councils, setting the highest possible standards in shaping and carrying out humanities programs for the public, fighting like a bulldog to more fully integrate the humanities into public discussion-all this was simply a means of contributing to the common good, doing the things he believed we are obligated to do to improve things for everyone. Remembering and acting on this question, what do we owe to each other, is the best and most appropriate tribute we can pay to Bruce Fraser.