Stephen Girard

On Founder's Day tomorrow, Girard College will celebrate its founder's 248th birthday and the school's 15Oth anniversary. What should be a gala year may be tarnished by the poor image of Stephen Girard. A recent series in another newspaper encouraged the notion that Girard was a racist and the school institutionally racist. The facts do not support these assumptions. Girard's first encounter with racial controversy was during the Revolutionary War. He fitted out one of his vessels as a privateer to capture black slaves from the enemy.

He was strong-willed and public-spirited, a wealthy man with concern for those less fortunate. He was determined to have an impact on future generations, and he did just that. His legacy to the Philadelphia region is a marvelous institution with few peers. But he had his quirks. He laid down very specific rules for the operation of and admission to his institution. And because of his unyielding stance, his executors found it difficult to adjust to social and economic changes as time went by. What resulted was ugly infighting that the founder surely would have detested.

In August 1965, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood outside the high stone walls encircling Girard College in the city's Fairmount section. "It is a sad experience to stand at this wall in the 20th century in Philadelphia, the cradle of liberty," Dr. King told 3,000 demonstrators massed outside the school Stephen Girard established in the 19th century to educate orphaned white boys. "It is a kind of Berlin Wall to keep the colored children of God out. " Three years later, the racial barriers fell, and four black students enrolled in the free boarding school for elementary and secondary students.

Autumn Adkins Graves, the first African American and first female president of Girard College, will leave the historic school in June, she said Tuesday. Graves, 39, presided over a difficult stretch for the private North Philadelphia boarding school founded by the 19th-century merchant-banker Stephen Girard for orphan boys. Serious money problems forced the school to enroll fewer students, lay off staff, and end a weekend residential program. Graves said family concerns led to her decision to step down.

Members of Teamsters Local 628, mostly drivers for the Philadelphia Daily News and the Inquirer, picketed Girard College yesterday on behalf of 75 employees - women who cook, serve meals, clean and do laundry for the students. The union says the Board of City Trusts, which administers the will of college founder Stephen Girard, has demanded that the women take a pay cut from $11 to $9 an hour.

There has long been a passion among members of the Girard College alumni to honor our foster father, Stephen Girard. The Girard College Alumni Association has been attempting to have the U.S. Postal Service issue a commemorative stamp in his honor. In the long history of deserving Americans who have received proper acclaim in this manner, Girard has been wrongfully denied a place among them. A process was begun 67 years ago in the House and Senate to honor Stephen Girard with a series of commemorative postage stamps in observance of the 100th anniversary of his death.

Many historians dismiss Stephen Girard as a robber baron, a misanthrope, a miser and worse, a godless man without religious values. A clause in his will may have been the source of this unfounded notion. Girard willed most of his money to found a boarding school for poor children. Insisting that their minds be open and free, he set some conditions. The most controversial was barring all clergy. But Girard's restriction of the clergy was widely misinterpreted. "I do not mean to cast any reflection upon any sect," he explained, "but, as there is such a multitude of sects, and such a diversity of opinion . . . I desire to keep the tender minds of the orphans . . . free from the excitements which clashing doctrine and sectarian controversy are apt to produce.

As the title of the new film says: "Stephen Girard: A Philadelphia Legacy. " Girard (1750-1831) was the fourth-wealthiest man in American history. He saved the nation from bankruptcy during the War of 1812. He was instrumental in the development and expansion of Philadelphia's port. And, with the millions Girard left in his estate, he created a true Philadelphia institution: Girard College. Established in 1831 and opened on the first day of 1848, the boarding school was conceived by the French-born naturalized American as a place for poor, fatherless white boys to get an education.

Why shouldn't the insane wife of America's richest man have, at least, a tombstone to commemorate her existence? This thought has obsessed retired federal worker Joseph Vendetti of South Philadelphia for more than two years. Recently, a granite tombstone for Mary Lum Girard, who died in 1815, was completed. But officials at Pennsylvania Hospital, where the wife of Stephen Girard is buried, refuse to allow the small monument on the grounds. The 200-pound tombstone sits in the window of DeChristopher Brothers Memorial Co. on Passyunk Avenue near 12th Street.

In a series that began Sunday, Inquirer staff writers Marc Kaufman and Dan Stets raise some troubling questions concerning the administration of Girard College, the 149-year-old school for fatherless children in North Central Philadelphia. School administrators downsized in 1992, cutting programs and staff, which resulted in lower academic performance by students. According to Kaufman and Stets, the adminstrators claimed the cutbacks had been made necessary by the financial crisis facing the Girard College trust.

Autumn Adkins Graves, the first African American and first female president of Girard College, will leave the historic school in June, she said Tuesday. Graves, 39, presided over a difficult stretch for the private North Philadelphia boarding school founded by the 19th-century merchant-banker Stephen Girard for orphan boys. Serious money problems forced the school to enroll fewer students, lay off staff, and end a weekend residential program. Graves said family concerns led to her decision to step down.

As the title of the new film says: "Stephen Girard: A Philadelphia Legacy. " Girard (1750-1831) was the fourth-wealthiest man in American history. He saved the nation from bankruptcy during the War of 1812. He was instrumental in the development and expansion of Philadelphia's port. And, with the millions Girard left in his estate, he created a true Philadelphia institution: Girard College. Established in 1831 and opened on the first day of 1848, the boarding school was conceived by the French-born naturalized American as a place for poor, fatherless white boys to get an education.

Stephen Girard , early Philadelphia's self-made millionaire global trader, energy and transport pioneer, war financier, and vegan slaveholder, left most of his $10 million fortune to the city, so it could build Delaware Avenue, hire cops, and fund other public projects - especially the Girard College for orphans. The good news is that Girard's legacy, managed by pros hired by Philadelphia's Board of City Trusts, grew a little last year, to $515 million from $486 million. The bad news is, the school this is supposed to be funding continues to shrink.

Three years of falling real estate prices, and three bad bets placed with a giant Wall Street bank, have pushed Philadelphia's city-run Girard Estate to make drastic cuts at Girard College , the free boarding school set up by Philadelphia's richest citizen in his will about 180 years ago. "We have downsized the school," Joseph S. Martz , executive director of the Board of City Trusts, which manages Girard's $500 million in investments, told...

Autumn Joy Adkins, an educator with experience in Quaker and other private schools, had struggled with writing a speech for yesterday's investiture ceremony at Girard College recognizing her as 16th president of the boarding school in Fairmount for low-income students. Her first two drafts focused on her historic role as the first African American and first woman to lead a school created by a bequest of the 19th-century merchant-banker Stephen Girard to educate poor white orphan boys.

In the college admissions essay she wrote for the University of Virginia, Autumn Adkins said she hoped to open a boarding school for low-income students. Now she's getting a chance to run one. Today, Girard College is scheduled to announce that Adkins, 36, will become the first African American woman to serve as president in the Fairmount boarding school's 160-year history. Adkins, an assistant principal at Friends Seminary, a Quaker school in New York City, said she knew her selection was a breakthrough for the private school that 19th-century merchant-banker Stephen Girard established to educate poor, white, orphan boys.

Rules vs. results A letter Saturday, "Misguided praise," said Mark Felt, the recently deceased Watergate whistle-blower, was not a good guy. But the letter writer was silent on whether Felt's action resulted in more justice rendered, or less. The only concern seemed to be that Felt broke the "rules," an act for which he is to be condemned. But if citizens of this country ever get to the point of slavishly following somebody else's "rules," irrespective of their outcomes, we are all on the road to totalitarianism.

Dominic M. Cermele, president of Girard College, has announced that he will retire next June from the historic private boarding school for low-income students. Cermele, who will be 67 in a few months and is called "Pop Pop" by some of Girard's youngest students, said he decided to step down a year from now because it coincides with the 50th anniversary of his own graduation from Girard. He became president in 2003. "It made it a good time to retire," he said yesterday. "After I retire, I will be pretty busy spreading the good word about residential education.

In an effort to prevent potentially catastrophic deterioration of the Girard Warehouses at Front and Market Streets, the city has gone to court seeking to compel the owners to stabilize the six teetering historic buildings. In papers filed Friday in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, the city outlined a history of code violations, lapsed building permits, and failed enforcement efforts. A hearing was scheduled for today, and city officials said they would seek substantial fines to back up enforcement efforts.