USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > Harvard College class of ninety-seven : forty-fifth anniversary report, 1897 > Part 6
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The next four years were spent in Europe and in the United States in various forms of pre-war service to hospitals, the China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Red Cross. With the entrance of America into the World War, he was appointed Deputy Commissioner of the Red Cross in England, and subse- quently was commissioned Captain in the Quartermasters Reserve Corps and assigned to duty as assistant to the American Military Attaché at the American Embassy. He was awarded the British Military Cross. On his return to this country he became Vice- Chairman of the Harvard Endowment Fund, and executive secretary of the Harvard Club of New York and secretary of the English- Speaking Union. He established the firm of E. H. Wells & Co. which made a specialty of rare books, first editions, prints, engrav- ings and rarities related to the humanities, in which he remained active until his final illness.
From the mere statements of these activities can be gleaned an
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Harvard Class of Ninety-Seven
idea of his diverse interests, but not of the fervor and success with which he pursued them. Wells had an intense and dynamic person- ality which permitted him to do nothing half-heartedly. Intensely patriotic and conscientious, he saw in Harvard the greatest single influence for good in the America of which he was so proud. Only those closely associated with him in his various offices can realize how far his influence transcended the mere conscientious discharge of their duties. Every human relationship which he established in his service to Harvard was touched by the fire of his enthusiasm and the charm of his personality. Discouraged or sullen students were cheered and inspired; indignant and complaining parents were won to cooperation; alumni were stimulated to generous response with their strength and resources. He journeyed over the country, addressing graduates and inspiring the organization of groups which later joined to form the Associated Harvard Clubs. Having worked over the collections of English literature in the University Library and discovered their gaps and deficiencies, he watched for oppor- tunities to fill them and often raised the money to do so. "The acces- sions secured through his influence entitled him to be recorded among the greatest of the benefactors of the Library." He never forgot the interests of the University, day or night.
Words spoken * at a memorial meeting in the Harvard Church on November 13, 1938, may be quoted to end this necessarily inade- quate memoir: "What more could be said of any man than that in the affairs of everyday life, no less than in great deeds, he left behind him the memory of a gentleman and a scholar - an example of faithfulness to duty and to friendship. If we believe that the con- summation of life is character and its best reward a place in the hearts of one's friends, our mourning for a great loss must yield to rejoicing for a fulfillment that years alone cannot make, nor the lack of years destroy."
D. C.
* By Mr. Jerome D. Greene.
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HERVEY B. WILBUR died suddenly on September 26, 1941. His wife, Leda Edmonds Pinkham Wilbur, whom he married Septem- ber 27, 1911, survives him.
He was born in Syracuse, New York, August 25, 1876, the son of Hervey Backus and Emily (Petheram) Wilbur. He prepared for Harvard at St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire, but was forced to give up college in 1895. He spent the next fifteen years travelling about the country engaged in the hardware and cutlery business. In 1910 he settled down in Seattle which has been his home ever since. For many years he was in the automobile tire business and during the last years of the World War (1918-19) he devoted all of his time to the Liberty Loan drives.
Our only other classmate in Seattle, Frank Bayley, has this to say about Wilbur:
"While Hervey had not been engaged actively in business during the period since our last Class Report, he was far from idle. His major interest was in the Episcopalian Church, and to it he gave unstinted time and effort. Locally he was a vestryman of the Church of the Epiphany, and for many years he represented the Diocese at provincial synods and general conventions. He was largely re- sponsible for the building of two Church Missions for the Japanese people of Seattle and adjacent territory, being wise in counsel and tireless in effort.
"Hervey's outstanding quality was a simple, sincere friendliness and kindness. I know of no one who had a wider circle of friends here and over the country, all of whom he could call instantly by name. He was immediate past President of the Seattle Harvard Club, to which he gave much time and leadership. Hervey was truly interested in the things that are worth while, and he emanated a wholesome goodness that made him in his quiet way a contributing factor to the better life of Seattle."
LOMBARD WILLIAMS died on February 24, 1941, at Boston, Massachusetts.' He was born on November 7, 1874, in Buffalo, New York, the son of George Lombard and Annie (Addicks) Williams,
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and was prepared for college by a private tutor, Mr. G. L. Stowell.
Following his graduation from Harvard, Williams became asso- ciated with William Sumner Appleton, '96, in the real estate business, in Boston. He was married, on February 8, 1896, to Ruth Bradlee, a daughter of Dudley Hall Bradlee, '71, at Medford, Massachusetts, and subsequently made that city his home. It was there, too, that his life-long interest in Massachusetts politics was begun. He was elected, in 1900, to the City Council of Medford, and later chosen its president, although its youngest member at the time. Such was his popularity and success in office that his fellow-citizens elected him to the House of Representatives, where he served from 1902 to 1904. Though he retired temporarily from public office, in 1913 he was again prevailed upon by his friends and political associates to repre- sent them, and was elected a member of the State Senate, serving that body until 1915. It was during this period that he was ap- pointed a member of the special legislative committee which drafted the bill for the Washington Street tunnel, the sole member, save its chairman, to represent a district outside the city of Boston. From 1915 to 1917 he served that city as Director of the Port. An intimate friend and close associate of the late Governors of Massachusetts, Curtis Guild, '81, and Roger Wolcott, '70, he was appointed by the latter a member of the Massachusetts commission to the Pan-Amer- ican Exposition at Buffalo, his place of birth.
During the First World War he joined the State Guard Company in Dedham - to which town he had transferred his place of resi- dence, and served, also, as a member of the Public Safety and Liberty Loan Committees. Although, for a time, he had been active as a stock broker, his early interest in the real estate field again asserted itself and caused his return to his chosen profession; he established his own firm, the Lombard Williams Company of Boston, and maintained this with marked success until his death. During his later years he had developed the keenest interest in whist, and had become one of the leading and most prominent exponents of the game in the neighborhood of Boston, often representing this city in its New York inter-allied tournaments.
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"Lom" Williams was possessed of great personal charm and phys- ical fitness, as well as having inherited from his father - himself a leading figure in the art circles of a city noted for its museum and important collections of paintings, Buffalo- a very decided taste for literature and the fine arts. Spare and powerful as an under- graduate, he played on our Class football teams and was a member of our Varsity cricket eleven - in addition to which - mens sana in corpore sano -he was an editor of the Harvard Advocate and a member of the Signet and O. K. Societies. During his middle and later years, despite the demands made upon his time by his business and political activities, his interest in the arts never flagged, and his intensely-alive and active association with the Boston Art Club be- came one of his most cherished delights. A sly, twinkling wit made him an ever-welcome companion among his friends and at his clubs - the Art, Algonquin and Harvard Clubs of Boston.
But it was in his home that "Lom" was at his happiest - sur- rounded by his family and, in later years, revelling like a boy in the happy comradeship of his eight small grandchildren, to whom he was devoted. His widow, and a sister, Mrs. Charles Hallam Keep, of New York, survive him - as do his four daughters: Mrs. Wil- liam B. Breed, of Chestnut Hill, Mrs. L. Manlius Sargent and Mrs. Frederick C. Dumaine, Jr., both of Weston, and Miss Marion Wil- liams, of Dedham. A brother, Gibson Tenney Williams, '91, died several years ago.
H. T. N.
WILLIAM TAYLOR BURWELL WILLIAMS died on Wednes- day morning, March 26, 1941 at Tuskegee, Alabama. Williams was a true Virginia gentleman. His spiritual quality made the fact that his skin was dark incidental and insignificant. He was also, in the searching phrase of the Negro folk-hymn, "a Christian in his heart."
Graduating from Hampton Institute in 1887, when it was a sec- ondary school unable to fit students adequately for Northern colleges, Williams progressed to Phillips Academy, Andover, where he formed a life-long friendship with a white classmate from Tennessee and
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gained the respect of all who knew him. He entered Harvard Col- lege in the fall of 1893 and was graduated magna cum laude in 1897, with the universal esteem of his classmates as well as of his teachers.
After a period of teaching in Clarke County, Virginia, he was called back to Hampton Institute by Dr. Frissell, its principal, to serve as a traveling field representative of the Institute in its various undertakings for the strengthening of Negro education throughout the South. His marked success in this task led to his being chosen in 1907 by Dr. James Hardy Dillard, the President of the John F. Slater Fund and the Anna T. Jeanes Fund Boards, as the Negro field agent for the two Boards, Mr. B. C. Caldwell of Louisiana being the white field agent. These men, working in constant friendly understanding with Dr. Wallace Buttrick and Mr. Jackson Davis of the General Education Board, Field Director S. L. Smith of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, the various State Agents for Negro Schools in eleven or more Southern states, Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, and many other institutions and organizations, all together exerted an influence for the general improvement of Negro education which, though little advertised, was immensely effective and far-reaching. One distinctive factor in its program, the "Jeanes Leaders" for the supervising and strengthening of the rural schools in their respective counties, has been copied in Africa, Kenya even having a training school for such leaders. In all this many-sided enterprise for making Negro education more truly a preparation for life and a means of community betterment, W. T. B. Williams was an active, sagacious, tactful, self-effacing, patient, untiring participant: always busy, al- ways smiling, always hopeful.
When Booker Washington died and Major Robert R. Moton, for many years the "Commandant of Cadets" at Hampton, was chosen as the Principal of Tuskegee Institute to succeed him, it was not long before he felt the need of Mr. Williams' wide knowledge and wise counsel at Tuskegee. Mr. Williams accordingly transferred his headquarters thither from Hampton; and eventually was released by the Slater and Jeanes Boards from his responsibilities to them suffi- ciently to enable him to give part-time service as Dean of Tuskegee
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Institute. In this position he played an important part in the re- organization of the School upon a collegiate basis in the years follow- ing the World War. In 1936 he was appointed Vice President of the Institute. His whole service at Tuskegee covered the last twenty years of his life. In 1934 he received the Spingarn Medal for his distinguished contribution to Negro education. It is not an exag- geration to say that in his life-time no man, white or colored, knew the Negro schools and colleges better than he, and no man labored more intelligently or more unselfishly to help them.
J. E. G.
BEEKMAN WINTHROP died in New York City on November 10, 1940. He was endowed at birth with a distinguished ancestry, am- ple means, remarkable intelligence and an engaging personality. Throughout his life, he worked serenely but with intense concen- tration.
He was graduated from Harvard magna cum laude, and from Harvard Law School, Class of 1900, with the rank of second. Joseph P. Cotton, later Under-Secretary of State, alone obtained a higher grade. This Law School class later contributed four pro- fessors to the Harvard Law Faculty; Winthrop outranked them all. After graduation from the Law School and passing his examina- tions for the New York Bar, he went to the Philippine Islands as secretary to Governor William H. Taft. He became in short order Assistant Executive Secretary for the Islands, then Acting Executive Secretary, and finally a Judge of the Court of First Instance. In 1904, at the age of thirty, he was made Governor of Puerto Rico, and would later have been Governor of Cuba had not a political mistake halted him as he was about to leave Puerto Rico for that post. Under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Taft, he showed distinguished talents as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In 1913 his political career closed permanently on the election of President Wilson.
Deprived at the age of forty of the profession he had originally chosen, he adapted himself quickly to another of a very different
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type. Again, so to speak, he began at the top but worked up. He undertook the leadership of the old, established banking firm of Robert Winthrop & Company in New York, and for the next twenty- five years was the valued adviser of banks and railroads, which treated his advice with steadily increasing confidence. He had busi- ness acumen and far-sightedness, and that rarest of all qualities, wis- dom. Will a man always be "decent"? May power be safely put in his hands? Beekman Winthrop qualified under both tests.
There is perhaps nothing radically wrong with the management of the public service in the United States. But it would have been far better for that service if the country had utilized throughout his career the talents of the Governor Winthrop of the twentieth century as it had those of his distinguished ancestor of the seven- teenth.
J. W.
MALCOLM CARR WOODS died at Marion, S. C., on October 5, 1938. After spending two years with the Class, he received both an A.B. and A.M. degree. He was born in Darlington, S.C., Decem- ber 29, 1874, the son of John and Augusta (Moore) Woods, and pre- pared at the Marion public schools. In 1902 he married Sara D. Power of Marion. He continued his residence in South Carolina, where he taught school for a while and then after a brief period entered newspaper work. His chief occupation, however, was the practice of the law in Marion, where during the war he acted as Chairman of the Legal Advisory Board for his county. His wife and three children survive.
ENRIQUE DE CRUZAT ZANETTI died at Varadero Beach, Car- denas, Cuba, on December 21st, 1940, following a heart attack. He was born at Matanzas, Cuba, on January 12, 1875, the son of Domingo S. and Irene (de Cruzat) Urbizo Zanetti, and was pre- pared for Harvard at the Roxbury Latin School.
"During the first four years after graduation, Zanetti practised law in New York City, principally in corporation work and in mat-
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ters connected with business interests in Cuba. Later he lived abroad and travelled and studied in Southern Europe and in North Africa. . . . In 1905 he married Esperanza Corrill, of Havana. They were afterwards divorced. A son, Enrique Carlos Zanetti, '27, Law '27-28, and a brother, Carlos A. Zanetti, '03, survive."
So much - for the chill data of official record as reprinted in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin. But for us, who knew him in his under- graduate days at Harvard, "the Count" was far too vivid a person- ality, of uncommon flesh and blood, to warrant so meagre and life- less a portrayal - warmth and color are essential.
To begin with: Zanetti was "Enrique" to a chosen few -but for the rest of us he became at once, and remained for all time, "the Count." One had but to glance at his sudden approach to note his difference - and distinction. Almost instantly the word "Castilian" sprang to mind. Breeding, refinement, delicacy were there, and a certain inherent dignity of expression and bearing. He delighted in "playing up the part" in all mock seriousness. Stopping short, in mid stride, he would draw himself erect-to full stature - and with a swift and graceful gesture, sweep the folds of his flowing cape over and across his left shoulder - stand, for a moment, in mock majesty - and then, of a sudden, collapse into a paroxysm of mirthful gaiety, and a flood of exquisite badinage. Just when and where his delightful and all-expressive title originated is open to question - however, our classmate Arthur Blakemore makes claim to that honor in behalf of his fellow students of the Roxbury Latin School. "His lovable, genial qualities and air of distinction," Arthur writes, "caused us to quickly confer on him the title of 'Count' which he carried through his college career." And he continues: "He entered our Class, I think, only during the last year of our at- tendance, although he may have possibly been there two years. He made a great impression on us common boys with his somewhat flamboyant clothes, his excessive politeness and his glasses on the end of a broad, black ribbon. He told us at one time what large losses his family had suffered in the sugar plantation on account of the Cuban Revolution which was then going on. He was not at all
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athletic but took a great interest in our sports, and was a good though not brilliant student. We had in the School, once a month, a day called 'Hall Day,' when the whole school assembled in the large hall and selected students orated, and I think the best per- formance of the time was Zanetti's various efforts. He had a strong dramatic talent and used to tell us of his ambition to go on the stage, which ambition I assume he gave up later."
Added color and warmth are brought to us by our classmate and former Class Secretary, Billy Garrison, to give emphasis and depth to our portrait. "My school acquaintance with our classmate Zanetti - the inimitable Count -occurred in the years 1888 to 1890 (in- clusive) at the Roxbury Latin School," Billy writes. "I think of him always in association with our ambassadorial classmate Charles Stet- son Wilson, of Bangor, Maine - since he and Zanetti lived as fellow lodgers in a private house near the school. They became inseparable friends and sustained each other in the rough and tumble of a semi- public school located in an already fading corner of a once dis- tinguished suburb of Boston. My moving to Brookline broke the thread of that relationship - and at college my absorption in athletics took me in a direction away from his more mature interests. Zanetti was indeed a rara avis, not only at the Latin School, but among his fellows of '97, where in the larger college group he could give more scope to his talents. At school I looked upon the Count with a sense of fascination. His dark hair, his high color, his fine profile and his unescapably patrician aspect piqued my boyish imagination. He was almost courtly in manner, but could move from grave to gay in a twinkling by a quick gesture of his handsome hands and tiny shrug of lifted shoulders, accompanied by a smile that dwarfed Caesar's conquests. With his departure the Class lost a personality of unique distinction - who seemed prismatic as a rainbow among dun-colored Yankees. Like Herbert Schurz he was strictly sui generis. Each was essentially lovable and gifted with a presence that could never be confused with other contemporaries.
"The childhood shows the man As morning shows the day."
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Could we but be given a glance at his earlier, Cuban boyhood, our portrait would, doubtless, reflect his likeness all the more faith- fully and appealingly - but this we are denied. Such as it is, then, we have on the canvas of our memory a fairly alive portrait of "the Count" as we knew him two score years ago.
In 1922, he wrote for our Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report: "One of our most distinguished classmates said to me some two years ago, and with surprise and happy laughter in his voice, 'You are just the same old 'Count' you used to be!', and I rejoiced." At that time he was living abroad, having abandoned the law as a profession, and had travelled extensively in Europe and North Africa. "I have lived 'literature,'" he wrote, "an existence primarily subjective and gen- erally remote, barren of data to set forth or events to chronicle. My interests have been of the same intellectual order that I had in col- lege, and though there have been, I trust, a growth or evolution, cer- tainly in things spiritual, I do not think my valuations of life's various aspects have greatly changed. I have pursued studies in art and history, in Italy and in Spain. In this latter country my knowl- edge of the people and my social connections were of service during the war." And in our Fortieth Anniversary Report, we are told merely that he was then living at Geneva, Switzerland. His son, Enrique, writes that his father had made occasional trips to the United States and Cuba, and that because of impaired health, and the outbreak of war, he had returned home in 1939, where he died, on December 21, 1940.
Were he alive today, like services to those he gave during the World War might well have been of peculiar and essential value to his country, and to ours, in this present emergency. And "the Count" would have played his part enthusiastically, and well!
H. T. N.
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Present Members of the Class
Yes, '97, we're here - Despite old Father Time's attempt to scotch us! Who says we can't come back -- in this our "Forty-Fifth Reunion" year? Just watch us! ! !
H. T. N.
George Washington Abele, 45 Milk St., Boston, Mass. Alton Dermont Adams, 15 Abbott St., Wellesley, Mass. Walter Davenport Adams, 73 Converse St., Wakefield, Mass. Dr. Eliot Alden, 2008 N. Serrano Ave., Los Angeles, Calif. Edward Harrison Allen, 718 N. Wayne St., Piqua, Ohio. Roswell Parker Angier, 140 Edgehill Rd., New Haven, Conn. Benjamin Cutter Auten, Carterville, Mo.
Dr. Charles Holton Babbitt, 277 Main St., Nashua, N. H. Francis Morrill Babson, 40 Broad St., Boston, Mass. Lewis Balch, R. F. D. No. I, Wakefield, R. I.
Melvin Spaulding Barber, 120 Otis St., Newtonville, Mass. Louis Victor Allard, 1391 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y. E. Gates Barnard, Harvard Club, 27 W. 44th St., New York, N. Y. Hector Galloway Barnes, 228} Broadway, Fargo, N. Dak. Dr. Michael Francis Barrett, 45 Highland Terr., Brockton, Mass. Frederick Barry, Columbia University, New York, N. Y.
Rogers Lewis Barstow, Jr., P. O. Box 533, Little River Station, Miami, Fla.
Charles Bradford Barton, 106 Prospect St., Berlin, N. H. Burnell Finley Bassett, 1902 N. Prospect St., Tacoma, Wash. Wilbur Wheeler Bassett, 900 Van Nuys Bldg., Los Angeles, Calif. Charles Hull Batchelder, 1195 South St., Portsmouth, N. H. Frank Sawyer Bayley, Stuart Bldg., Seattle, Wash. Henry Williamson Beal, 1217 Beacon St., Brookline, Mass. Arthur Messinger Beale, 73 Tremont St., Boston, Mass. Ralph Norman Begien, 2610 Monument Ave., Richmond, Va. William Warren Bell, 140 La Salle Ave., Piedmont, Calif. John Milton Benjamin, 93 Elliott St., Beverly, Mass. Dr. Horace Binney, 65 Green St., Milton, Mass. Lindsey Eaton Bird, Cliff Inn, Marblehead, Mass. Robert Clark Bird, 15 Windermere Ave., Arlington, Mass. William Horton Blake, P. O. Box 907, Santa Fe, N. Mex.
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Arthur Walker Blakemore, 27 State St., Boston, Mass. Cornelius Newton Bliss, Westbury, Long Island, N. Y. Rev. Charles Rowell Blood, Orland Park, Ill. Schuyler Colfax Bloss, 915 E. 12th St., Winfield, Kans. Claude Kedzie Boettcher, 828 17th St., Denver, Colo.
Stanley Marshall Bolster, 50 Congress St., Rooms 925-933, Boston, Mass.
Frederick Perez Bonney, 247 Forest St., Medford, Mass. Sydney Howard Borden, 910 Robeson St., Fall River, Mass.
John Mason Boutwell, Continental National Bank, Salt Lake City, Utah.
William Gilman Breck, B. & O .- Alton R. R., 810 Cotton Belt Bldg., St. Louis, Mo.
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