Reconciled father and son heal a wound at Hillsdale

DENVER — Five years after scandal drove him from the presidency of Hillsdale College and into a secluded cabin in the Colorado wilderness, George C. Roche III is still trying to explain what happened.

The problem is, he still doesn’t know. In his telling of it, he doesn’t know why daughter-in-law Lissa Roche announced in October 1999 that the two had been conducting a secret 19-year affair. Nor does he understand why, hours later, she killed herself with a gunshot to the head.

“I was blindsided by it,” says Mr. Roche in a telephone interview with The Washington Times, his first since Lissa’s death. “As I’ve reflected on it, I should have seen something that I didn’t see.”

In the ensuing uproar, Mr. Roche issued only a formal denial and refused to speculate on Lissa’s motives. He was denounced as a hypocrite and scoundrel, with some of the fiercest criticism coming from old conservative friends.

Hillsdale holds a special place in conservative hearts, thanks in large part to Mr. Roche. In his 28-year reign as its president, he transformed what had been an obscure Michigan party school into a nationally recognized bastion of conservative scholarship, hailed for its academic independence and refusal to accept federal aid.

With the scandal threatening to bring down the college, Mr. Roche stepped down and disappeared from public life.

“I didn’t know why she did what she had done, and I was interested in having all these people go away so that we could get on with our grieving,” he says. “The only way I could have defended myself was to depict Lissa as crazy. I wouldn’t have done it then, and I won’t do it now.”

In the years since, Mr. Roche has focused on repairing the damage done to his family. He has reconciled with his son, George C. Roche IV, known as I.V., who was initially convinced of his father’s guilt and became instrumental in his downfall.

Now 69, Mr. Roche has turned to mending his public reputation.

In his first appearance since he left Hillsdale, Mr. Roche presented a paper “The Third American Revolution” at the Freedom Seminar in Portland, Ore. His friends, heartened by his action, created a Web site for him last month, friendsofgeorgeroche.org.

Still, the question of his guilt remains unresolved in the minds of many. The Hillsdale leadership has concluded that “no one here is in a position to exonerate Dr. Roche, no matter how much we may wish him well,” says Douglas Jeffrey, vice president of external affairs.

“The bottom line is, we really don’t know what happened,” says Burt Folsom, a Hillsdale history professor who was hired two years ago — after Mr. Roche left. “If I go around campus, I hear, ‘Well, of course he’s innocent,’ and then I hear others say, ‘Well, of course he’s not.’

“If he is guilty, he did the right thing by stepping down and letting the college get over it,” Mr. Folsom says. “He did it in a quiet way and didn’t write a book about it saying ‘how I was railroaded by my daughter-in-law.’ If he’s innocent, then it’s a tragedy. Then he really is a martyr.”

Son backs off

What’s intriguing about evidence in the case is that there really isn’t any. Mr. Roche’s defenders argue that if these two well-known campus figures had been involved for 19 years, something — a note, a photograph, a witness — would have surfaced during the ensuing media frenzy.

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