Ruth Kissin Helman ’73 was in the first class that followed the “new curriculum” at Brown. She went on to receive a degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy before undertaking a long career as a teacher at the Brearley School in New York City. She remembered her time at Brown fondly, especially the chance to take independent study courses in history. She singled out Abbott “Tom” Gleason as particularly influential in furthering her interests in Russia. Gleason was a professor at Brown from 1968 until he retired in 2005. He chaired the history department, was active at the Watson Institute for International Affairs, and was the author of two books on Russian history, one book on totalitarianism, and a memoir titled A Liberal Education. He was also a beloved teacher. When Helman died in 2019, she left a substantial gift to Brown to set up two things — the Abbott Gleason University Professorship in Russian History and the Abbott Gleason History Department Discretionary Fund. The first holder of the named chair is Ethan Pollock, who was hired as the school’s Russian historian after Gleason retired. Currently the discretionary fund is being used by the department to support a postdoctoral position in the department and to develop relationships with historically Black colleges and universities, in honor of Gleason’s own formative experiences teaching at Tougaloo College in the early 1960s. Helman remained in contact with Gleason and his wife Sarah over the years. Sarah Gleason, who still resides in Providence, was pleased to learn about the professorship endowed in Gleason’s name and the additional support that Helman’s generosity has given to the history department. In a recent conversation, she offered insight into Gleason’s life and legacy and the impact of the Gleason Fund at Brown.
Tell us about Tom (Professor Gleason). What was he particularly passionate about? How did his interests evolve as his career progressed?
Sarah Gleason: “Painting for Tom was the road not taken. Beginning in his high school years at St. Alban’s, under the mentorship of renowned art teacher Dean Stambaugh, he began to spend long hours in the art studio. He developed a Cezanne-like style, listening to classical music and forgetting all the pressures of life. I have many of Tom’s paintings from these years and later, as step by step he became an excellent artist, gradually moving into abstraction. Painting became a mainstay of his life, continuing in summers in Vermont and on the Rhode Island coast. When he developed Parkinson’s disease, painting became a lifeline — a creative outlet he could continue as words became more inaccessible. In one of the marvelous short essays he wrote about enduring Parkinson’s, he quoted Hiroshige, ‘I am an old man, crazy about painting.’ The other great love he developed in his teens was his passion for jazz. He began by visiting jazz clubs in D.C., befriending musicians and gradually building a large record collection (including classical and traditional Celtic music). He seemed able to identify any jazz musician he heard on a record. He developed friendships over jazz, particularly with student friends John Lax and Oren Jacoby. I marvel at Tom’s ability to maintain such friendships while pursuing serious scholarship in Russian and Eastern European history. He worked intensely on his several books and articles, each reflecting a passionate interest at the time he worked on them. Finally, his connection to each place in his life was hugely important to Tom. He spent his first 12 summers on Spring Farm in Connecticut (purchased by his grandfather in the 1930s) and this remained a spiritual reference point all his life. And our house in Fox Point, where he lived for nearly 50 years, was another canvas on which he could create a visual projection of his life and passions.”
Tell us about Professor Gleason’s time at Tougaloo College.
“The summer of 1964, which Tom spent teaching at Tougaloo as part of a Harvard project bringing faculty and graduate students to Mississippi, to help at Tougaloo, was enormously important to him (and is the subject of a chapter in A Liberal Education). When he came to Brown, he continued to be active in Brown’s Tougaloo Project. I remember hosting Tougaloo students here in Providence — they may have been applying to Brown Medical School, if I remember correctly.”
How does the Gleason Fund commemorate your husband’s legacy? How do you hope to see it grow in the future?
“The department’s plans are thrilling to me, and would have been to Tom, of course. I know Tom’s time at Tougaloo and participation in Freedom Summer led to his lifelong commitment to combat racism in the small ways available to him. So this plan to develop relationships with HBCUs is really big. The department’s current chair, Ethan Pollock, is in fact the perfect person to shape Ruth’s donation as Tom would have wished. Ethan and Tom were good friends and both are/were committed to strengthening the field of Russian history. Putin’s war on Ukraine has made study in the field very difficult in recent years (particularly for would-be graduate students). Ethan, as was Tom, is especially sympathetic to the needs of graduate students, so graduate student support in this way is great.”
What would it mean to Professor Gleason to know that a professorship has been endowed in his name?
“Tom would have been thrilled by having this chair named in his honor, as it symbolizes his dedication to Brown and to the history department, his deep commitment to the field of Russian history, and the pride he took in mentoring his students throughout his career.”
The Department of History offers its sincere gratitude and thanks to Sarah Gleason for describing the life and legacy of her late husband. We are honored to highlight the immense impact that gifts such as Helman’s have on our department, its students and our community as a whole.