Bruce Stewart ’61, a distinguished and influential educator who helped champion more Black students to Guilford and forever changed the campus’ diversity in ensuing years, died on Sunday in Chattanooga, Tenn. He was 85. Bruce’s family plans a memorial at Chattanooga Friends Meeting Saturday, Feb. 8, at 2 pm. The memorial may be viewed on Zoom.

Pick a hat – almost any hat – and chances are Bruce wore it during his 14 years at Guilford: first as an educator, later as the College’s popular Director of Admission. Bruce helped transform Guilford from an overwhelmingly white preserve for students from East Coast families to a more diverse and inclusive college.und

He was also a folksy presence on campus, often seen darting across the College’s quad in sneakers, or riding his bicycle. Guilfordians say he possessed a gift of weaving almost any discipline into a course or cafeteria discussion with the greatest of ease. His faculty residence on George White Road, where he and his wife Jean lived, was frequently an extension of those conversations, an incubator for ideas and, more important, action, said Acting President Jean Bordewich.

“Bruce made me and so many others feel like things were possible,” said Jean. “That these lofty ideals were not limited to classroom discussions or these goals we talked about were not for other people, but for us – and that we should pursue them. He definitely raised my sights and ambitions. He loved being around students.”

And he loved Guilford. At rubber-chicken Rotary lunches and high-end cocktail parties alike, Bruce enjoyed regaling others with the story of a rail-thin 17-year-old showing up for his first year at Guilford knowing little about Quakerism and even less about the College rooted in its tenets.

“He would recruit stewardesses on airplanes to come to Guilford,” said Judith Weller Harvey, the first director of Friends Center, which Bruce helped birth. “He may have been an outsider when he showed up as a student but he quickly became a part of the Guilford fabric.”

Indeed over time – 14 years as a staff member until 1984 and 18 more years as a trustee –  the outsider became synonymous with Guilford, having left an indelible imprint on thousands of students and the College itself.

Bill Soles ’81 was one of them. Bill remembers running into Bruce at a social function in Greensboro. At the time, Bill was a student – and not a particularly good one – at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was overwhelmed by the impersonal atmosphere of a large state university, with its sprawling 400-seat lecture halls, classes often taught by graduate students and assessments reduced to multiple-choice tests. The sheer size and structure of the institution made him feel like just another face in the crowd, disconnected from meaningful learning.

Bruce persuaded Bill to transfer to Guilford, where he thrived.  “Some people are just wired to care deeply about others and that was Bruce,” said Bill. “There was something deeply Quakerly about him. The way he valued what you felt, what you had to say – that’s how he treated everyone. He was truly a Guilford giant.”

A chance encounter

Bruce B. Stewart was the son of Scottish immigrant parents and a native of Lynn, Mass. In 1957, after graduating from high school, Bruce was content with working at a bakery in his hometown until a chance meeting with a Guilford graduate in a grocery store that summer.

Pete Moore ’39 was pursuing his doctorate in Boston when he ran into Bruce at a grocery store in Lynn, a northern suburb. In a 2007 interview for Guilford College Magazine, Bruce recalled Pete telling him about his experience at Guilford and how it transformed his life.

“I went home that night and I said, ‘Mom, this guy I met in Henry’s Market teaches at this college in North Carolina and I think I want to go there.’ ”

Two days later, Bruce mailed off his application to Guilford.

Bruce was an Economics major who never spent a month in that discipline. By the time he was a junior, he began to feel a close relationship with the professors who expanded his thinking. The impact professors like History’s Ed Burrows, English’s Chauncey Ives and Ann Deagon, and Sociology and Anthropology’s Paul Zopf had on Bruce convinced him to become an educator.

“They were all people of tremendous principle,” Bruce said, “and they were all gathered in this one place.”

A leader in education

After graduating from Guilford and earning a master's in Counseling at UNC Chapel Hill, Bruce started his career as a social studies teacher and school counselor at Page High School in Greensboro, coordinating the school’s first efforts at integration in the turbulent ’60s. When state education officials were starting the N.C. (now UNC) School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, they tapped Bruce to serve as the school’s first Dean of Student Affairs.

Bruce returned to Guilford as a faculty member and administrator, working in a succession of jobs, as Director of Admission, Assistant Professor of Education, Director of the Richardson Fellows Program, Assistant to the President, Acting Academic Dean, Provost and Associate to the Vice President for Development.

With Guilford classmate and fellow administrator Jim Newlin ’61, he was a founder of the New Garden Friends School in Greensboro. He consulted on the establishment of the N.C. School of Science & Mathematics in Durham and on public school desegregation in the state.

Deeply committed to Quaker education, he served two notable secondary institutions as Head of School: Abington Friends School in Jenkintown, Pa., for 14 years, and Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., for 11 years before his retirement in 2009. He resided in Chattanooga in his later years.

Bruce was the recipient of Guilford’s Charles C. Hendricks ’40 Distinguished Service Award and Alumni Excellence Awards.

In 2003, Bill Soles and his family made a significant gift to the College to create the Bruce B. Stewart ’61 Awards for teaching excellence and community service that are presented to Guilford faculty and staff on an annual basis.

“Bruce was always looking to better everyone and everything around him,” said Bill. “His motivation every day was to have an impact on people. He’s no longer with us and he’s still doing just that.”