Harry Payne, January 7, 2008

Published on the Hamilton College website

17th President of Hamilton College
Presented: March 4, 2008, by Dan Chambliss, Professor of Sociology

Harry “Hank” Payne, president emeritus of Hamilton College, was born on March 25, 1947, and died unexpectedly on January 7, 2008, at the age of 60. A remarkably accomplished historian and academic leader, he served as president or acting president of three distinguished liberal arts colleges and the nation’s largest independent school, yet he always remained completely unpretentious.

As a teenager, Hank dreamed of becoming a diplomat, but when Princeton and its Woodrow Wilson School turned him down, he attended Yale instead, where he “fell in love with school;” he revered his teachers there as everywhere, and could recite the names of nearly every teacher he ever had, from childhood on. He decided to become one. He graduated from Yale summa cum laude with simultaneous bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and was recognized as the highest-ranking candidate in the Yale College Class of 1969. That summer he married his high school girlfriend Deborah Laipson, from Wooster, Mass.; they would have two sons, Jonathon and Sam, both of them growing up to become accomplished scholars. After college, Hank undertook Ph.D. studies in history at Yale, won Danforth and Woodrow Wilson Fellowships, and in 1973 received his doctorate and began teaching at Colgate University. In 1980, he became acting dean of the faculty and provost at Colgate, at the age of 33. In 1985, having in the meantime served as president of the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, he became the provost of Haverford College, and two years later was named its acting president. In 1988 he was chosen to be the 17th president of Hamilton College, becoming one of its youngest presidents, and its first Jewish president, to the delight of his mentor and friend, legendary Hamilton trustee Sol Linowitz. During these years, he also authored or edited several books and more than 50 articles, essays and reviews on European intellectual history.

At Hamilton, Hank focused particularly on fundamental issues of admissions and student life, overseeing a dramatic increase in student diversity, initiating the construction of Beinecke Village and deftly launching the process which eventually led to the transformative Residential Life Decision of 1995. Yet he never seemed overwhelmed by the job. One day in his first semester at Hamilton, he joined Deborah Pokinski and me for lunch in Azel Backus House. He told us he was enjoying teaching a course on, I believe, the Enlightenment. When we asked how, as a new president, he found the time to teach a course, he replied, “Oh, you always have the time; you just have to decide what to spend it on.” It seems that his mentor Sol Linowitz had told him that “You’re the president; YOU get to decide what you’ll do.” And he did. During the day, one could often see Hank strolling the campus, walking his golden retriever Ginger, who always seemed to find the mud puddles.

Hank also loved to play golf, where he excelled at the “short game.” He was a partner so comfortable and relaxed that those around him felt their own game was improved simply by his presence. And his demeanor on the course was the same as his demeanor while leading commencement ceremonies: totally attentive and competent, but also a bit whimsical, gentle and self-effacing.

In January 1994 he left Hamilton to become president of Williams College, where he remained for six years until 2000, when he moved to Atlanta, Ga., becoming president of Woodward Academy. It was a huge step for Hank and Debbie, leaving the small college towns of the Northeast to go to a large, Southern city, and leaving the upper realms of higher education for the noisier world of a pre K-12 school. Hank became a leader in the philanthropic, arts and Jewish organizations of greater Atlanta, and quickly came to embrace his work at Woodward. It was a different life, but one with its own special challenges and rewards. Among the best moments of his year, he said, were his regular visits to kindergarten classes, where he would sit surrounded by the children, reading to them from his favorite stories about Babar the elephant.

Hank Payne was a devoted husband and father, a consummate intellectual and a masterful academic leader whose hand was gentle but firm; since his passing, he is perhaps most often remembered for his brilliant intelligence and his unfailing kindness. His portrait in the Hamilton library is rather remarkable, as former President Tobin has noted:

“One does not gaze directly at, nor lift one’s eyes up to embrace an august, stately, remote personage; rather, the viewer looks … from the level of a student’s chair upon a teacher, with that distinctive shock of red hair and a chalk board in the background. The portrait is distinctively, irrepressibly Hank.”

He will be missed.

Published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on January 09, 2008

Harry Payne, Former Williams President, Dies

WILLIAMSTOWN – Harry C. Payne, 60, former Williams College president… was the 14th president of Williams, serving from 1994 to 1999. The great room in Goodrich Hall was renamed for him; the Harry C. Payne Williams College Professorship in the Liberal Arts is designed to promote and support interdisciplinary teaching and research.

He was instrumental in the construction and renovation of the college’s $45 million Science Center and updating of Griffin Hall, the college’s oldest classroom building. He also helped launch planning for the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance.

“We benefit here at Williams every day from initiatives carried out or begun during the presidency of this wonderfully decent and caring man who dedicated his professional career to expanding the intellectual lives of students,” posted Williams President Morton O. Schapiro on the college’s Web site Tuesday. “His influence lingers even in the construction of our North and South Academic Buildings, designed to achieve for the humanities and social sciences what, under his stewardship, the Science Center was able to do for the natural sciences.”

Payne earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree from Yale University. He was president of Hamilton College in New York prior to Williams. He resigned from Williams to lead the 108-year-old Woodward. Reportedly the largest independent school in the nation with an enrollment of 2,850, the school was established as the Georgia Military Academy and serves Grades prekindergarten through 12 in five schools in the College Park area.

According to news reports, Payne had been successful in leading Woodward through a multimillion-dollar capital campaign and taught a history class in the Upper School…

…Payne leaves a wife, Deborah, and two grown sons, Jonathan and Sam, and brother, Richard, of Andover. The funeral was scheduled for today at 3 at Arlington Cemetery in Atlanta.

Class Notes: Hank Payne died in January. Hank received his BA and MA in 1969 and his PhD from Yale in 1973. He was married to Deborah Laipson shortly after graduation. Hank began as an assistant professor of history at Colgate in 1973, became provost at Haverford College in 1985, president of Hamilton College in 1988, and then president of Williams College in 1994. He was president of Woodward Academy at the time of his death. David Lionel Smith, a Williams College colleague, said this about Hank in the Boston Globe obituary: “He was a brilliant man. He had an amazing intellectual gift. He was extraordinarily quick and was able to see things with a great clarity, and he was an accomplished problem-solver.” Tom J. Reed remembers Hank as “one of the brightest lights of our class—always with a book under his arm and a smile on his face. He seemed at ease with his path as scholar and wore his learning lightly and gracefully.” Greg Coleman,his Trumbull roommate, adds this: “His wife Deborah and sons Jonathan and Sam would love to hear from any and all of you who knew him. I’m sure Woodward Academy would forward any messages. This is such a devastating loss after such a distinguished career. I miss him.”

Here is what Hank wrote in his final paragraph of our 25th reunion class book: “Somewhere during that first year of Directed Studies at Yale, I discovered a passion for learning and ideas, and at some later point I discovered a yen for public affairs and activity. It has been my great good fortune to be able to combine these yearnings on beautiful campuses, surrounded by bright people, in companionship with the woman I have loved for 30 years.” A life well lived, cut tragically short.

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