triumphantly presented a framed copy to the school. But Hodson also spurred the institution to embrace a more modern, businesslike approach to managing its financial affairs. And he backed up his ideas with money. In support of Gould’s belief that Washington College needed to create an endowment, Hodson not only lobbied alumni and trustees, but also donated $1,000 as a lead gift. He gave an additional $1,000 toward the expenses of fundraising, and further funds for publicity and advertising. He encouraged the school to hire a full-time development officer at a time when very few institutions had them. Although Washington College had officially gone coed in the 1890s, its handful of female students were still barred from living on campus. Against the strong opposition of some trustees, Hodson worked with Gould to integrate women fully into classrooms and campus life—and also funded construction of a new dormitory for them. Indeed, the Colonel believed that the vibrancy and value of the college experience must extend beyond just its curricular offerings. He urged Presidents Gould and Titsworth to invite prominent guest lecturers and commencement speakers to Chestertown, including the venerable Thomas Edison (who declined) and a young novelist named F. Scott Fitzgerald (whom Titsworth had never heard of, inviting instead a columnist from The Baltimore Sun). Hodson urged Washington College to build school spirit by establishing glee clubs and commissioning an official song. He also proposed adopting a mascot. “It is not necessary to take an animal,” Hodson counseled Titsworth. “A grape, strawberry, pine tree, muskrat, chicken, or anything else that is raised in the community that is a matter of pride, is available.” Perhaps wisely, the president chose to ignore this particular nugget of wisdom, thus sparing future generations of Washington College students from being known as the Fighting Strawberries. In countless other ways, though, the Colonel’s unfailing enthusiasm for Washington College continued to bear fruit. “You have a delightful flair for doing with ultimate felicity the unexpected and the generous thing,” Titsworth wrote. By 1927, the high-flying year of Lucky Lindy, Babe Ruth, talking movies, and the stock market boom, Washington College was flying high as well. Since Colonel Hodson’s first visit
just eight years earlier, its student enrollment had more than tripled, its annual income doubled, and the size of its faculty increased nearly as much. Its crippling debt was a thing of the past, and its endowment campaign was well on its way to reaching the initial target of $200,000. The future had never looked brighter. And as the school’s president would later recall, never had Clarence Hodson been more involved in Washington College than during that memorable year—which turned out to be the last year of his life.
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A Fitting Monument Hodson could easily have favored other, more prominent institutions with his patronage. In 1918, he had delivered the commencement address at William & Mary. Some years earlier, he had accompanied his father on a visit to Thomas’s alma mater, Princeton, and been highly impressed with its president, “Dr. Woodrow Wilson, the American historian,” whom the Colonel presciently called “a builder by instinct ... and a compelling administrator of large affairs and plans.” Aiding one of those schools, instead of a little-known college in Maryland, would certainly have won him more prestige in Manhattan business and social circles. Yet when Hodson penned a very brief autobiography just a few months before his death, the only academic affiliation he mentioned—and, indeed, his only philanthropic relationship of any kind—was that with Washington College. Noting that “the Hodson family for centuries has been interested in the advancement of education,” he described his service as a Washington College trustee and the honorary degree that it had awarded him in 1922. Clearly, Colonel Hodson’s attachment to the Eastern Shore partly explains the favor he showed Washington College. But judging from his correspondence with the school’s presidents, it is equally clear that he was excited to have found a place where both his money and his leadership—and the same talents as a builder that he had demonstrated in the business world—could make an enormous difference. At a place like Princeton, he
The Trust allots nearly $9 million to endow merit scholarships. As a gesture of appreciation, WC continues its long tradition of funding full four-year scholarships for dependents of former Beneficial employees. The Trust funds creation of the Lelia Hynson Boating Park, with a pavilion at water’s edge. With this gift, the Trust’s total support of WC tops $10 million.
During the Campaign for Excellence, the Trust helps endow two faculty chairs, honoring Louis L. Goldstein ’35 and Joseph H. McLain ’37.
The Trust endows a chair in economics.
The Trust endows the directorship and programming for the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.
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would simply have been another big donor. At Washington, he was not just an institutional savior, but a founding father of the 20th- and 21st-century college. So it was a grievous blow when the bad news reached Chestertown. On the morning of January 13, 1928, the Colonel was at home in East Orange, N.J., when he was felled by a sudden and fatal heart attack. He was barely a month short of his 60th birthday. President Titsworth wrote: “Colonel Hodson was a man of untiring energy, fixity of purpose, and unswerving determination. He looked only forward, clinging to his ideals with such tenacity that obstacles were swept aside.... Not only has Washington College lost in him a substantial contributor to its physical needs but likewise a sage counselor, an astute well-wisher, and a layman of unusual educational vision.” Elsewhere, Titsworth wrote regretfully that he believed Hodson had “made no provision in his will for Washington College.” But this was not quite true. In fact, Hodson had set in motion during his lifetime a legacy of philanthropy to the College that would endure for generations. His spirit of generosity brought forth The Hodson Trust. And so it happened that on Dec. 2, 1935, the Trustees had decided to grant Washington College the first gift of many to come—more than $18,000 in available income that the Trust had generated since Hodson’s death seven years earlier. This money, supplemented by a $5,000 personal gift from the Colonel’s widow, Lillian Brown Hodson, would help fund the construction of a new dining facility. The building would be called Hodson Hall. * * * This article is excerpted from The Hodson Century: A Legacy of Leadership at Washington College (Literary House Press, 2015), with permission of the author, whose position at the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience is endowed, in part, by The Hodson Trust.
The Trust invested $2.5 million in ambitious plans for a new waterfront campus and boathouse.
2008-09 The Hodson Trust Star Scholarship program at Washington College, inspired by Hodson Chair Finn M. W. Caspersen, was one of the first initiatives in the nation to offer full scholarships to military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Trust commits $4 million to endow George’s Brigade/Washington Scholars program.
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