Willard Marsh

Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory (1935-60)

The Faculty and the Administrative Officers of Hamilton College deeply mourn the death, on March 28, 1961, of their colleague and friend, Willard Bostwick March, Upson Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory from 1935 to 1960.

Few men at Hamilton have ever been so much a part of their college’s tradition and life as was Willard Marsh, and few have ever served and loved this Campus with such enduring dedication. His attachment to Hamilton was ingrained – it was part of his Central New York State heritage.

Born in July, 1890, in the nearby town of Bridgewater, Willard Marsh attended the Bridgewater High School, and later, the Utica Free Academy. He entered Hamilton College in September, 1908, and graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1912. As a student here, he won the Kirkland Prize Oration Award, the McKinney Public Speaking Contest and the Clark Prize Contest. He also won the Locke Fellowship in Greek which he used for graduate study at Harvard from 1912 to 1913. From 1913 to 1916, Willard Marsh taught Public Speaking at Hamilton, and in the following year, studied at Princeton University where he received his A.M. Degree in June, 1917. After service for one year in the U.S. Army, he became Professor of English and Public Speaking at Carroll College, Wisconsin, and later, in September, 1920, returned to Hamilton as associate professor of Public Speaking. He was promoted to full professorship in the Spring of 1927, and became Chairman of the Public Speaking Department in 1935 – the post he held until his retirement in June, 1960. He received an Honorary A.M. Degree from this College in 1915.

As Chairman of the Public Speaking Department at Hamilton for thirty years, few alumni of this College would ever dispute the fact that Willard Marsh was the Public Speaking Department. His courses reflected the traditions of his predecessors, Henry Mandeville, Anson Judd Upson, Henry Allen Frank and Calvin Leslie Lewis; but they also bore the unmistakable stamp of his own strong personality. The impact of this personality was impressively documented in the hundreds of letters he received from Hamilton Alumni throughout America and from many foreign countries on the occasion of his retirement.

Generations of Hamilton men, and all of us who knew him as a colleague and a warm friend will remember Willard Marsh as one who gave unceasingly of his talent and affection to this College. As a teacher, he will be remembered as a “student of our sweet English tongue” who instilled in all who studied with him a reverence for the gift of speech. The College Chapel was his Church, and those who presided over its services was his ministers. The history, the traditions, and the great personalities of this College never failed to come alive when Willard Marsh recalled them – both through his written and his spoken words. He was generous, almost to a fault, to his community, his fraternity, his students and his many friends. In short, Willard Marsh was what many men are called, but only the rare ones deserve: a true Christian gentleman for whom goodness, integrity – and Hamilton College – was a way of life.

Adopted by the Faculty of Hamilton College, May 1, 1961