Spend just a few minutes with Chancellor Emeritus William H. Danforth, M.D., and it’s readily apparent what he values. Education. Family. And his hometown. Although he retired as chancellor of the University in 1995, Danforth — a life trustee — didn’t retire from much else. He’s spent most of the past 10 years doing work similar to what he did in his years as chancellor: enhancing local opportunities for education and striving to make both the University and St. Louis better places.
“St. Louis is my home, I love St. Louis,” he says. “I was born here, and I’ve lived here most of my life. I think that the United States is made up of strong communities, and I think that St. Louis and Missouri are important parts of the United States.
“It’s where I live and I feel devoted to it.”
That’s readily apparent in looking at his endeavors since leaving Brookings Hall 11 years ago.
First, he served as chairman of WUSTL’s Board of Trustees from 1995-99. He had planned to stay just three years, but served one more as the Campaign for Washington University was being kicked off.
During his time as chairman of the board, he helped oversee the completion of Project 21, a long-term plan for the University. Then came the board retreat and the start of the fund-raising campaign.
“Immediately upon my arrival I thought that Bill Danforth could be my strongest asset as a new chancellor,” said Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. “My hope has been realized. Bill is a tireless and committed advocate for Washington University, and it is still not unusual for us to begin a day together at a 7:30 a.m. meeting and wrap up the day together closing an event at 10 p.m.
“He is not only a hard worker, but he is wise, sensitive and creative. I continue to value the opportunity to work together as we face the next challenges in higher education, research and regional development.”
So much for retirement.
“I loved discussing retirement with Bill as we both approached that point in our careers,” says P. Roy Vagelos, M.D., former chair of the Department of Biological Chemistry at the School of Medicine and founding director of the University’s Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences. “Bill’s idea of retirement was simply the time it took to undertake a new challenge that could make an enormous contribution to society.
“Bill wants to continue involvement in projects that will benefit society, especially Washington University, St. Louis and Missouri as long as he is physically capable. I like that attitude.”
One of the largest and most far-reaching of his undertakings was the creation of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in 1998. The Danforth Center is a not-for-profit research institute with a global vision to improve the human condition.
Applying modern biologic research to plants offers opportunities to improve the human condition internationally and regionally. Examples of the possibilities include enhancing the nutritional content of plants to improve human health, increasing agricultural production in ways that ensure a sustainable environment for coming generations, replacing petroleum with biofuels and providing the scientific ideas and technologies that contribute to the economic growth of the St. Louis region and of the state of Missouri.
It’s a perfect fit, because St. Louis is in the center of the nation’s growth of its two most important crops — corn and soybeans.
“I had always thought that St. Louis was a great place for plant science,” Danforth explains. “It goes back to early discussions with Bob Thach, now dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, who was then chair of biology, and we decided that the University’s Department of Biology should make a big effort in plant science.
“The advances in basic biology — cell biology, molecular biology, genetics and so on — were as applicable to plants just as they were to medicine, and there weren’t many places ideally set up to do that kind of research when we began talking about it.”
A number of plant scientists ended up coming to St. Louis and performed some groundbreaking work, but according to Danforth, “we didn’t really have a critical mass here. People were being recruited away.”
“After I retired, Peter Raven (director of the Missouri Botanical Garden), Virginia Weldon (then vice president of Monsanto) and I were on a trip to California,” Danforth says. “We met and decided it was time for St. Louis to make another run at plant science.”
One of the unique aspects of the Danforth Plant Science Center is that it’s a collaborative effort among several entities. WUSTL, the University of Missouri, Monsanto, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Purdue University all have researchers working toward a common goal.
“We all agreed that plant science could be a regional specialty,” Danforth says. “Each institution would strengthen its plant science, and we’d create a new institution that could be a great specialty for our region.
“We thought the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts, so we started the plant science center.”
Some of the research focus areas of the Danforth Plant Science Center include adapting plants for environmental stresses, controlling plant pests and pathogens, enriching the nutritional value of foods and developing new materials and products in plants.
Apparently, Danforth had been planning this center for quite some time.
“Bill and the Danforth Foundation created the Plant Science Center, and we saw him get the idea,” said Mary Dell Olin Pritzlaff, University trustee for 26 years and family friend. “About 10 years ago, four of us went on an East African trip. Ibby (Bill’s wife), Bill, my husband, John, and I had been looking at all the flora and fauna with guides.
“At our tented camp during the afternoon free time — before going on animal runs at dusk — Bill would sit under a tree with his laptop computer and type. Even Ibby did not know what he was writing that week, she told me. But he was creating the idea of the Danforth Plant Science Center. Yes, it tells you vacations are good breaks to think.”
As the biological sciences are such a strong area of interest for Danforth, it was only natural that he was asked to chair the Coalition for Plant and Life Sciences, an effort to build plant and life sciences in the community.
“We’ve had wonderful biologic science, but we have not had much industry developed from it, and if any community is going to do well, it needs jobs and industry,” he says. “So this coalition is designed to build the infrastructure and support systems for the development of new companies in life sciences.
“The coalition started out of an experience here in St. Louis. Some faculty at Washington U. had developed a switch for getting information quickly on and off the Internet, but they couldn’t get a company started in St. Louis so they had to go to the West Coast. That just seemed to me a shame that the jobs went out to the West Coast.”
According to Danforth, the St. Louis region excels in the life sciences and is in fact one of the world’s frontrunners in that area. Saying that “you should build on strength” partly explains the rationale for the coalition.
“We certainly have other strengths,” he says, “but this is something that is very special for us.”
Another interest that is keeping Danforth busy these days may not have as wide-reaching ramifications as the plant and science center and coalition — at least just yet — but might someday prove to be one of the most important and vital undertakings in the St. Louis area.
The St. Louis Public Schools have had six superintendents in three years. The most recent left the district July 14 after just 15 months on the job.
The district is in a state of flux, which is why in late July, Missouri Commissioner of Education D. Kent King asked Danforth and attorney Frankie Freeman to co-chair a committee to provide advice on the St. Louis Public Schools.
It’s not the first time Danforth has been intimately involved with secondary education — he was the settlement coordinator for the district’s landmark desegregation case in 1999.
The case stemmed from a 1972 lawsuit brought against the St. Louis Public Schools by parents alleging that the city schools were still segregated despite the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
The case was argued until 1975 when a consent decree was reached that established magnet schools in the city and called for teacher transfers and the realignment of some school attendance boundaries within the city of St. Louis.
But the consent decree was deemed an insufficient remedy by the plaintiffs who filed an appeal with the U.S. District Court. The case was reopened and the suit continued, becoming more complex with the addition of suburban school districts as defendants.
In March 1996, Danforth was appointed to work with all parties in the case to reach an agreed-upon plan for ending the court supervision of the St. Louis metropolitan desegregation case.
On Jan. 6, 1999, all parties to the lawsuit announced that an agreement had been reached that would provide for continuation of the most successful components of the 1983 Settlement Agreement — including the voluntary transfer program and the St. Louis magnet schools.
Considered by many to be the most generous and long-lasting settlement of any desegregation lawsuit, the St. Louis Student Transfer Program remains the largest and most successful public school choice program in the country.
“That took a lot of time and energy,” he admits, “but the nice thing about it was people really worked together to accomplish a very, very good settlement.”
Don’t get the impression that it’s been all work all the time, though. With six of 13 grandchildren living in the area — and a seventh attending the University — Danforth still has time for some family life on the side.
He and his late wife, Ibby, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2000 and went on a University trip to India.
“In New Delhi, some friends of ours, Gurpreet and Kushal Singh, put on a renewal of vows ceremony for us Sikh-style,” Danforth says. “That was a great highlight of our lives.”
While some may find it hard to succinctly sum up the contributions of Danforth’s family and the man himself — both as a chancellor and in his “retirement” years — others have him pretty well pegged.
“It’s about service, the creativity of it — all following in the example of their grandfather, William H. Danforth,” says Marion Guggenheim, widow of Academy Award-winning producer Charles Guggenheim and a family friend for more than 50 years. “Working collectively with the colleges at the University and the wider St. Louis community, under Bill Danforth, Washington University has become a jewel.
“What could be better?”