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Feature
IC NEWSLETTER -
SUMMER 2009
4
Never was a man as determined as Shafik Jeha. At least
when it came to history. And more specifically the
history of two esteemed establishments: AUB and IC.
At 97, Jeha is walking history book himself. His body
may have slowed down but his mind is as sharp as
the day in 1982 he came across a box in an AUB office.
He opened it warily to find dozens of confidential letters,
some handwritten and some typed. The documents were
letters between William E. Dodge and Daniel Bliss – the
two men vastly responsible for establishing the university.
Jeha spent several months summarizing and organizing
the papers. It was a treasure for the archives that he had
lobbied for years earlier at the university.
“Every educational institution should have archives,” he
said. “AUB didn’t have archives when I arrived and there
wasn’t anybody collecting historical documents.”
And so he set himself on the task. A task with effectively
began in 1929 when he first came to the university. He
had arrived from his small village of Bishmezin in Koura
(northern Lebanon). ‘School’, was a tiny stone shack. Too
small to accommodate all the students, lessons were
mostly held under a large Juniper Tree. From there, Jeha
was admitted to the missionary-run American School for
Boys in Tripoli. It was his first venture outside the village
and expecting, yet another tree as a school, found himself
in a large building. “I was shocked,” he remembered.
“This is a school? I thought. I couldn’t believe it.”
The boy did well enough to earn a
scholarship to a university in the far
off city of Beirut. After an arduous
three hour journey in the sweltering
sun, the driver pulled up in a narrow
empty street. Seeing some kind of
archeological fort, Jeha yelled at the
driver. “Why in the world did you bring me here?” he said. “I
don’t want to see a fort, I want to go to the university!” “But
sir,” replied the driver. “This is the university. The American
University of Beirut.”
And so began Jeha’s deep curiosity and love for the
university and its prep school – and there he would remain
throughout his career.
Jeha soondiscoveredhis real love: history. Hewouldwander
around the campus and pause before every building
wondering about its history. And so it happened that one
day, an elderly man approached him and asked him why
he was staring
at the buildings so.
When Jeha explained his keen interest in
the history of the campus, the elderly man chuckled and
invited him to his home (on campus) for a cup of tea. “Ask
me everything you want to know,” he said.
Jeha did. And thus sprang a friendship between Jeha and
James Stewart Crawford (professor of Bible and Ethics at the
Prep school since 1897) which would last until Crawford’s
death. In his quest of history, Jeha followed up with many
of the elderly who had witnessed or knew first hand of the
birth of AUB.
Hiscuriosityquenchedandwithmanyhistorical documents
in his hands, Jeha began to lobby the university for an
archives library.
“Those that knew the history of the university all
died,” said Jeha. “And the information they knew
went with them. They didn’t record anything. But
a lot of information was with me. There were
documents that no one had bothered to
collect.”
Jeha called on then AUB president
Norman Burns (1961-1965) and
offered to create an archives library. He was
given a small room on campus.
Today, the Jafet Memorial Library’s University Archives and
Special Collections, is used by students and researchers
worldwide.
Meanwhile, university administrators were becoming
aware of the need to establish an elementary school for
its prep school. So far, the university was in agreement
with the Ras Beirut school (now demolished) just across
from (IC) campus. But the standards were not up to par
to feed into the Prep school. The teaching methods were
One Man’s
Quest
for an
Archive