Deconstructing a Man of Contrasts

Two chauffeurs, both of whom were fired, said they would get in trouble if they didn't open the door of the black Infiniti for the couple even at home in the garage.

But Judy Elliott, a friend from Atlanta, said, "I've never seen that side of them."

The Eloquent Philosopher

David Ladner said his father is extremely patient. He sees it most vividly in the way his father takes care of his younger brother Mark, who is autistic and retarded. Others said the same thing, admiring how he talks to his disabled son and takes him on long walks.

Many describe the Ladners as good friends as well as loving parents. Elliott thinks of Ben Ladner turning her baseball hat around, out on his boat one day, and grinning at her, just like a big brother.

Supporters said he was a hardworking and eloquent leader for the school, dedicated to public service with a global outlook.

"He befriends artists and intellectuals wherever he goes," said Tom Bertrand, who met Ladner through the National Faculty.

Trustees praised Ladner year after year and gave him generous raises, hoping to keep him.

Still, there were people at AU asking questions.

Some professors and students said the president effectively walled himself off from the campus, rarely meeting with deans or getting to know faculty.

Ladner's longtime executive assistant, Margaret H. Clemmer, said in a statement to lawyers, "Dr. Ladner's schedule was maintained with strict confidentiality at his direction," with only his wife, Clemmer and her assistant allowed to access it. That made it difficult for even senior administrators to get things done, Clemmer said.

Jeffrey A. Madden, a chauffeur for the Ladners who was fired, said he remembers the chef preparing coolers full of salmon and steaks for a get-together for a few of Nancy Ladner's college friends on Gibson Island. The university car was so packed with coolers and cases of wine that he could hardly use the rearview mirror as he drove the supplies there, he said.

"I worked for the university," he said, with a $40,000 salary. "But I felt like their personal little slave boy."

The Beginning of the End

This spring, an anonymous letter to trustees triggered an audit of the Ladners' recent personal and travel expenses. His attorneys have responded that the investigation was unfair and exaggerated. They emphasized that, although he would be willing to pay some back, the Ladners were entitled by his contract to spend virtually everything that they did. The board voted Oct. 10 that the Ladners should reimburse AU $125,000 and add $398,000 to their taxable income for the past three years.

He has lost friends over his insistence that what he did was justified. Two trustees who had been close with the Ladners, George J. Collins and Paul M. Wolff, have become two of his most vocal critics. Wolff, who resigned from the board, said recently that he had affection for Ladner but believed his moral compass had lost its bearings.

The president also lost support on the campus. Many said that for all of Ladner's eloquence, he was deaf to how his legal arguments would sound to professors and students on financial aid. Exactly what he owes is less relevant than "that he thought that all of this was his due," said professor Lenny Steinhorn. "That's where the moral and ethical aspects of his leadership come in."

"We all see through our own filters," Elliott said. But in decades of friendship, the Ladners "have never disillusioned me."

Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.