The Ambassador

By Marlow’s junior year though, the philosophy major was chosen to represent Albright at Columbia University in N.Y. during its Christian Student Movement summer training for campus leaders. During this time, Marlow not only met future wife Betty, but he learned about the possibility of traveling overseas to work after graduation. And travel he did.

For three years Marlow lived in India and worked as a hostel warden in a boy’s high school where he was responsible for the on-campus life. "I got there a few months after Ghandi was killed and after the independence movement. It was a really important time in terms of people’s values."

While in India, Marlow says, "I learned quite a bit of the language." In fact, "Dr. Gingrich used to tease me that I was the only student at Albright who knew Telegu."

Upon his return, he was accepted at Yale Divinity School, graduating in 1956.

– Mary Fry Good ’49

The Chaplain

Around this time, Marlow found his way back to Pennsylvania, and in a small town outside of Carlisle, Pa., he began ministering to three rural churches in the area. "The people were mostly farmers, very generous and warm people," he says fondly. "I thought I was going to be there a long, long time."

However, Harry Master’s, then-president of Albright, "called me up and very graciously asked if I would come to Albright as chaplain."

After declining the invitation the first time, Marlow finally agreed a year later. He began as chaplain in 1959.

"It was fun because I knew the faculty, but I was literally thrown into a teaching position that I wasn’t prepared for. (The chaplain’s contract called for the teaching of one course.) I felt like I was constantly trying to stay ahead of the students."
And then the ’60s arrived.

"They were exciting times. It was a time of racial unrest, anti-Vietnam, protests of the military industrial complex…it was pretty energy packed."

As Chaplain, he says, "I pretty much identified with the student activity. We had dozens of ‘teach-ins’, faculty-student discussions, rallies in the stadium. I was basically a link between the students and the administration. The students took social issues very seriously."

However, it was also a time when there were a lot of problems with drugs and alcohol on campus, he says. "It was a problem on all campuses." But there were some serious consequences, he adds, and "I worked to admit several students into drug and alcohol rehabs."

Toward the end of the 60s though, Marlow says he realized he "had run out of steam. The 60s were exciting, but exhausting!"

About to begin a new job search, Marlow says his "Albright" luck struck again and he was offered a position in the Religious Studies Department. "So I didn’t end up leaving the campus, and that’s where I stayed."