Wallace Johnson

11/06/1967

Wallace Bradley Johnson, the secretary emeritus of the College and former secretary of this body, died on August 29, 1967, at the age of 74. In grateful remembrance, we record the loss of a dedicated servant of this college.

Orphaned at an early age, Wallace Johnson built a world-wide family of countless friends on amiability and service. The public manifestations of his concern for human welfare might be illustrated, albeit sparsely, by his volunteer service in the American Field Ambulance Corps during World War I, on the Hoover European Relief Commission at the war’s end, and as a regular nightly aide in Utica hospitals during World War II. Yet his pre-eminent concern came to be centered on Hamilton and Hamiltonians.

A graduate of his Class of 1915, he returned to his Alma Mater in 1922 to begin forty years of devotion in an extraordinary variety of positions. For five years, he was entitled Field Secretary; for another five years, he was Secretary of Admissions; for eight more, he was called Registrar. In 1940 he was named the Secretary of the College and granted faculty status, a post and status which he held until his retirement in 1962.

His several official titles, however, form but a faint revelation of his activities on behalf of this college. With almost faultless attention to detail, he managed the ceremonial occasions of the college year. Since his memory could place names and faces in appropriate context under almost instantaneous recall, he was a gracious host at college affairs.

As secretary of the faculty, he not only wrote the minutes of its meetings, but sometimes displayed either by facial expression or sharpness of tongue a marked impatience with the tenor of the discussions. Yet subsequently he felt obliged with the utmost contrition to apologize to the colleagues whom he thought he had offended. Fashioned before the First World War, he clung with nostalgic attachment to the attitudes and ideals of his generation. As age came on, he felt that his world was slipping away, but he could not despair of Hamilton, its faculty or its students.

Countless undergraduates through many years were invited to dinner at his home where Wally satisfied his appetite for the companionship of friends. On their return to Clinton, alumni flocked to his door. In his world-wide travels, Wallace Johnson oriented his trips around visits to Hamiltonians.

Perhaps we may safely assert that, as an envoy of goodwill, Wallace Johnson touched the lives of mor Hamiltonians more intimately over the past half century than any other resident of College Hill. His mark on Hamilton is not only fixed, but unique. The Trustees of the college recognized this fact by awarding him the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters in 1962. In this resolution we, the Hamilton College faculty, seek to perpetuate in Hamilton’s annals the memory of one of her most devoted sons.

Accordingly, we enrol this resolution on our minutes and request our current secretary to prepare a copy for Wallace Bradley Johnson’s family, the whole Hamilton community.