SEPTEMBER 19, to the sound of bagpipes on the Glendon campus, York staff, faculty, friends and family bid farewell to York's first president, Dr. Murray G. Ross, after whom the Ross building is named, and the Murray Ross Entrance Scholarship. A procession of the University's dignitaries and Ross' family and acquaintances set the tone for a celebration of his life and achievements. Born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, youngest of five children, Ross, who led York University through its first decade, died on July 20, 2000, at the age of 90. "York University has lost one of its greatest visionaries and most colourful champions," said President Lorna Marsden. "Our founding president caught the wave of reform in higher education and built a different type of University with it...one concerned with the key issues of our own culture and society in Canada, one that engaged people in their learning and in their community....and he hired women faculty from the beginning which was the start of a university of equity. He was truly a great man." Ross had a communitarian vision of university - open to all, without elitism, welcoming everyone of ability, regardless of race, nationality or religion and providing them with the opportunity of improving their life through education. The late 1950s and 1960s, when Ross had the opportunity to establish such a university, were, in the words of York Professor Emeritus James Gillies, "arguably the most significant and exciting days in education in Canada." Ross was an officer of the Order of Canada and had a long, distinguished career, both as a professor and an administrator. Before his presidency at York, he was vice-president of the University of Toronto. He was the author of several books, including New Universities in the Modern World, and his memoirs entitled, The Way Must Be Tried: Memoirs of a University Man. He is pre-deceased by his wife Janet. Tributes were paid by his son, Robert B. Ross, and his close friends R. McCartney Samples and Drs. John O'Neill and James Gillies. Letters from former students paid tribute to the fact that he taught his classes with energy, optimism, enthusiasm and a wicked sense of humour. His son related an anecdote about his father appearing at the elementary school he attended where he had the principal call him out of his class, filling Robert with foreboding of some unknown mischief he had committed. When the principal left , Murray Ross whispered in Robert's ear, "It is too nice a day to be in school. Let's go swimming."