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Page in its consequences. With George Detmold gone, a group of faculty comprising more than half of the English Department met with Dean Schuchman in April 1971 to rescind their earlier recommendations of Stokoe as chairman and to nominate another candidate instead.
It was a painful time for Bill Stokoe. He had always perceived himself as a gentleman and a scholar, always prided himself on his ability to care for the members of his department. Like a father, he had encouraged them to go to graduate school, followed their progress, recommended them for tenure and raises. Virginia Covington recalls that Bill was "so thrilled" when she decided to enter a PhD. program that "he arranged for me to take a year off. He was really pleased and took it personally. Also, I think he was setting me up as an example to others" But in 1971, with many members of the department interpreting Stokoe's chivalry as paternalism, it was time fora change. The final decision was made at a meeting of the English Department held on April 15, 1971 , a meeting Stokoe did not attend. With typical understatement, it was reported in the minutes, under item number six in a memo with nine items, that "the secretary was requested to send a letter to Dean Schuchman informing him of the department's new nomination for its chairman."17
This left Dean Schuchman in the uncomfortable position of having to inform Stokoe of the decision. At this point, Schuchman says, no one doubted that Stokoe "was a reputable scholar" It was "his administrative style, the fact that he could be arbitrary,
that he wasn't a good chairman, that he had a temper and could be irrational" that the department members cited as the reason for wanting him replaced Stokoe recalls one final open faculty meeting in which he "stood up and tried to find out whether there were any with me. I defended my changing of the lock on the door on the grounds that some of this research involved human subjects and was sensitive material not to be open or accessed. Nothing came of that."19
John Schuchman remembers that, under the circumstances, Stokoe "handled it pretty well" But Bill Stokoe was no more willing to remain in the English Department under anew chair-

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