NO SECOND ACTS? GAIL PARKER, TOM PARKER, AND THAT "BENNINGTON AFFAIR"

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.