A LOOK BACK AT
BENNINGTON COLLEGE'S
FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT --
AND HER VICE-PRESIDENT
THOMAS D. PARKER
GAIL THAIN PARKER
and their daughter
JULIA THAIN PARKER
Published in Women's Wear Daily
July 27, 1972, p. 24
To quote from Lee Wohlfert's opening paragraph: "You could almost hear the outrage in college faculty rooms across the country when Bennington College broke the news. Come September, its new president would be Gail Parker, a 29-year-of slip of a girl who's currently an assistant professor of American history and literature at Harvard. To top it off, they named her 30-year-old husband, Tom, now a senior tutor at Harvard, Bennington vice-president."
The Parker presidency-vice presidency did not last the typical four-year undergraduate term, and ended with a bang, not a whimper, taking the Parker marriage with it.
But separately Gail and Tom Parker went on to other careers. Both remarried. President Parker, as Gail T. P. Wickes, has a short biography here. Vice-president Parker, Thomas D. Parker, has his here. Julia Thain Parker made the news on a happy occasion, here.
