A View from College Hill
Mac Bristol
by President Joan Hinde Stewart
On August 18th we lost an irreplaceable member of the Hamilton family, a trustee and board chair emeritus whose love of our College was unconditional and probably unparalleled.
Even though William McLaren Bristol III, who died at the age of 88, was one of the oldest and longest-serving of our trustees, he was also one of our most forward looking, well aware that our future
could not and
should not attempt merely to replicate our past, but must build on it as we adapt to changing generations and centuries. He admired the Hamilton faculty and was determined that the College should prosper.
Mac served on the 2003 search committee for a new Hamilton College president. I remember the first time we met. It was in New York's Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, and he sat across from me, a little to the right. I said, "How do you do, Mr. Bristol?" My greeting did not please him. "Call me Mac," he boomed. His tone did not inspire me to feel easy about addressing him so familiarly!
I think my next interaction with him took place after I learned that I was to be named president and I telephoned him at his farm in Newtown, Pa. I said I was "humbled" at being invited to preside over Hamilton. He yelled at me. I was too nervous to retain his exact words, but they went something like "That won't do! Don't ever say that again. Just do the job."
Every subsequent time that I called him over the next half-dozen years, I got a similarly energetic reception. I'd say, "Mac, I just want to thank you for your gift to the Annual Fund" or whatever gift it was, and he'd admonish me: "Don't waste your time calling me. You have a college to run." His gruffness, as everyone knows, was often kind and cordial. He was straightforward. Then, of course, he'd want to hear all the news. He'd tell me that we were doing a great job, and he would conclude every conversation the same way, by saying that if he could be helpful in any way whatsoever, we should call on him.
I grew to count on Mac for his support and unfailing good will. It is hard to imagine the College without him. Mac remains our largest single benefactor, supporting buildings, scholarships, sports and people. Right up to the weeks before he died, he invested in Hamilton, challenging others to do the same. I believe that over the years, countless people have given to Hamilton — or given more — for the principal reason that Mac told them to do so. At this very moment, dozens of faculty members and students are direct beneficiaries of the scholarships and professorships he and his wife, Mary Jayne Comey, supported, and virtually every member of the community benefits from the building projects the Bristol family made possible.
This College, like any small private college, owes its existence and its success to generous and foresighted individuals. No one did more for us, or spent more time thinking about us, or believed more firmly in our mission and our future than Mac Bristol. I mean not just his gifts, his support of countless initiatives, buildings and individuals, and his determination that our College should thrive and grow always better. I mean his sustaining love.
It was unconditional, in that nothing could shake it, but it was
not undemanding. Mac gave of his heart, his resources, his time and his intellect to help make us the best we can be, and he rightly expected all of us to have the same ambition, the same affection and the same energy for Hamilton.
