Letter from David Plater '58

425 Easy Street

Thibodaux, LA 70301

February 5, 2011

Adam F. Falk, President

Williams College

Williamstown

Massachusetts 01267

Dear President Falk,

            I am writing today about Sheafe Satterthwaite, whose teaching career at Williams College is being terminated this coming June.

            Although we knew of Sheafe Satterthwaite from our son, Christopher Plater ’89, who had joined him on a student trip to Dominica in 1989, my wife Sheela and I personally have been a friend of Sheafe since the early 1990s. Considering us an anchor in an unfamiliar, maybe turbulent Cajun sea, he arranged with us a visit to the bayou country of his winter study group. We housed him and several of the students and came to know Sheafe as contemporaries as well as parents of a Williams graduate.

            Over the years we have occasionally seen and shared meals with Sheafe Satterthwaite, sat before his hearth, read his students’ essays, and kept in close touch. When I informed him last fall of a planned trip to Williamstown, he invited me to speak to his class, which was studying tree groves in the American landscape. It was fun and educational for us all, and I was happy to share with his enthusiastic students some views and information which for many were unfamiliar, if not completely foreign.

            What impresses me about Sheafe’s courses is the extra learning dimension that he  gives to students at Williams. Their visions are much expanded in ways that other disciplines do not so accomplish. He teaches “art,” in a real sense, by leading his students to see and know their physical and cultural surroundings in depth. The experience, Sheela and I believe, is something that gives the liberal arts education at Williams a special and desirable tone and character.

            Sheela and I of course are concerned that Sheafe will no longer be invited to teach. It will be a loss to the College and to his students. We ask that the decision be reconsidered.    

            Thank you.

                                                            Sincerely,

                                                            David D. Plater, Class of 1958