Word: gavin
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...found out that we were where the power was," Gavin says now with a touch of bitterness and pride. He is not ready to grant the University--or anyone else but his own friends--even a crumb of credit for the slow rise of the Harvard Semitic Museum during the 1970s. Gavin himself has never received anything more than an annual $300 honorarium from the University. His own salary, and virtually every penny the museum has spent in the last 10 years has been raised by his own efforts...
...then learned just how exasperating Harvard could be: "I tried to find the seat of power--formally, informally... I tried very hard." Gavin found nothing but what he saw as inertia and indifference. All the while, he was preparing a list of embarrassing questions to ask the administration: What part had Lowell's widely recognized personal prejudices played in the apparently systematic sabotage of Semitic studies at Harvard during the '20s and '30s? Why was the University no longer picking up the tab for heating and maintenance as Eliot had promised in 1903? How did Bundy almost get away with...
...Gavin posed some of his most aggressive queries in the newsletters he began producing in the early '70s, nestled in innocuous cloud-balloons in the corners of his whimsical covers drawings: "Does Harvard's treatment of Mr. Schiff's gift warn would-be donors?" The great philanthropist had died bitter and disappointed in 1920 after seeing the University turn its back on his generosity...
...human side of his museum's roller-coaster history means a great deal to Carney Gavin. A bluff, bulky, gigantically affable man, he makes friends--and remembers their names--with instinctive ease. He saw that his cause carried little weight among the administrators: he had no money. So Gavin, a practicing Catholic priest, turned to his last resource: people. He marshalled a vast army of eager volunteers out of thin air, and by the mid-'70s, hundreds of area professionals and students were helping him put his museum back together again. He once even piled the entire Harvard football team...
...Gavin also made friends with his upstairs neighbors, the scholars of the Center for International Affairs. He invited them to get-togethers and dropped subtle reminders that the building did not really belong to them...