by Audrey Anderson
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Recently, as part of its Library Foundation of Needham series, the Needham Free Public Library presented Rachel Silber Devlin discussing her new book “Snapshots of My Father, John Silber” with Matt Robinson, host of “The Writer’s Block” on the Needham Channel.
The evening began with a slideshow of Silber family photos curated by Devlin. She explained that she had difficulty choosing the 200 photos she included in her book, because there were so many good ones to review. The varied group of photos included those of a young John Silber, his wife Kathy, the growing family of eight children, famous people John Silber knew, and ones of John Silber at work at Boston University and on the Gubernatorial campaign trail.
Devlin said her family was a large, warm, group of accomplished people. Her mother and father were “brilliant,” and they expected their children to be achievers. The whole family ate dinner together every night, waiting for their father to arrive at the table-sometimes very late- before eating.
When Silber was fired from his job as the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Texas due to a disagreement on the direction of the college, he took a job as the President of Boston University. When he first saw the BU campus, Silber said it was “the ugliest campus he’d seen.” According to Devlin, he considered unifying the divided urban campus by “sinking Commonwealth Avenue” or “turfing over Storrow Drive all the way to the water.” Neither solution was possible.
Silber’s tenure at BU included taking over the management of the Chelsea Public Schools and providing education to prison populations. He was involved in the development of statewide testing requirements, and he led BU from a nearly bankrupt university to one with a healthy endowment and beautiful new buildings and trees lining Commonwealth Avenue.
Devlin said her parents loved meeting prominent people. They researched people before they met them by reading their books or listening to their music. Devlin’s parents drew “high-caliber people.” As an “artist, athlete, and scholar” her father “knew so much” and had a lot to discuss. He was an “alive, alert, in-the-moment person who engaged others.”
Read Rachel Silber Devlin’s “Snapshots of My Father, John Silber” to learn more about her family, political discourse in Boston, and her father’s impact on Boston University and education in Massachusetts.
