Lorin Andrews: Passive Remembrance in Kenyon's Archive

By Anonymous

    A lot of exciting developments this week as our ideas for this project have begun to really take shape. During our time working with the archive materials this week, we all began to realize that we are incredibly drawn to materials relating to Kenyon and its handling of national crises. We specifically became incredibly interested in what was going on at Kenyon during times of war, and how such times, and the losses associated with them, were commemorated. 

    One such example of Kenyon’s commemoration of a member of the community lost during wartime was Lorin Andrews. He was the President of Kenyon from 1853 until he resigned to enlist in the Union Army in 1861. He was widely recognized as the first Ohioan to volunteer to fight for the Union. While in service, he caught typhus and died in Gambier less than a year later. The College went into deep mourning, and he was buried here on campus, with his funeral procession held on Middle Path. 


    Not only did my group find this story quite sad, but almost shocking, as none of us had any idea who Andrews was. We discussed how we have frequently walked by Rosse or Odin, and have seen the large obelisk-like grave in the Kenyon Cemetery, and had no idea it belonged to. We had no idea of the significance it held. 


    This discussion with my peers made me think about the article we read by Aleida Assmann this week, and her ideas about forgetting. Assmann explains that by nature, forgetting is a normal feature of our personal and cultural lives, and that remembering is incredibly exceptional. In line with this concept, she argues that there are two types of remembering and forgetting: passive and active. Active forgetting would be when a group attempts to destroy memory by intentional acts (destroying evidence, censoring accounts, etc.). Active remembering is the exact opposite, when a group preserves memory by intentional acts by committing the memory to the canon and preserving past as present. On the other hand, passive forgetting and passive remembering involve less intention. Passive forgetting involves losing, neglecting, or abandoning a memory, and passive remembering involves putting a memory into the archive and making it a cultural relic. 


    While it is clear that Lorin Andrews was incredibly important to his contemporaries here at Kenyon, his story has been mostly lost to time. His name does not come up when discussing famous Kenyon figures or trivia, nor is his grave pointed out on tours for prospective students. He is not a Kenyon cultural staple, like Philander Chase or Lord Kenyon. Andrews unfortunately fell victim to Assman’s concept of passive forgetting and passive remembering. Over time, as the Civil War faded into the past and those at Kenyon who knew Andrews left, his memory was eventually neglected and then lost. Documents relating to his life and death were saved, and placed into Kenyon’s archive and became a cultural relic. 


    With this project, and our group’s choice of topic, we hope to be able to pull some of these passively remembered figures into the present, out of the archive and into Kenyon’s modern collective memory. 



Reference: Assmann, Aleida. 2011. “From Canon and Archive.” Pp. 334-337 in The Collective Memory Reader, edited by J.K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi, and D. Levy. New York: Oxford University Press.

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