Oberlin College Library Perspectives

Number 11, February, 1995

In Memory of Erwin Griswold

The Oberlin College Library has lost one of its most generous and supportive Friends.

Erwin N. Griswold, who died in Boston on November 19 at the age of 90, had been Honorary President of the Friends of the Library since the organization's founding in 1991. He also served as a member of the Library Visiting Committee from its inception in 1989. In addition to working consistently to improve the quality of Oberlin's library, Mr. Griswold created the library's largest endowed acquisitions fund. The James H. and Hope E. Griswold Fund, established in memory of his parents, supports monographic purchases for the Department of Politics and for other social science areas.

Mr. Griswold graduated from Oberlin in 1925 and from Harvard Law School in 1928. He joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1934 and was named dean of the school in 1946, a position he held for twenty-one years until President Lyndon Johnson appointed him Solicitor General of the United States. From 1973 until his death he was a partner in the firm of Jones, Day, Reavis, and Pogue. During the course of his extraordinary legal career he argued 127 cases before the United States Supreme Court. Dean Griswold had been a Trustee of Oberlin College since 1936.

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