Hobart College - Echo of the Seneca Yearbook (Geneva, NY)

Page 14 text:

THE ECHO OF THE SENECA WILLIAM BOND READ

Page 13 text:

VOLUME LVI, 1917 I 3 Trastegs l£E@eft®d Pow@flfl Evasas M Written for the tScnn liy I;uiim,ki k I . Gburkiikrc, Director of LhiUnlelphiii Uumm of Municipal Research Hobart College may well be proud of having graduated Powell Evans, class of 1888. Not only has he served his college and his business well, but he has given himself unsparingly to community and public service, always as a volunteer and always from a fine sense of civic duty. From his experience in trying to get things done for the common good, he has learned that public service needs trained, far- seeing. intelligent men, imbued with a desire to serve and, in so doing, to find themselves. Mr. Evans was born in South Carolina in 1868, the son of Dr. James Evans and Marie Antoinette Powell of Leesburg, Virginia. He was educated in the schools of Florence, S. C. While in Hobart college, he was a member of Sigma Phi and was awarded Phi Beta Kappa. Graduating in 1888 with special training in engineering, he entered business, meeting with great success and finally becoming principal owner of Merchant Evans in 1905. Fie is also an officer of two other corporations, one traction and the other a sprinkler company. One of his most distinctive public services was the organization of the Philadelphia Fire Prevention Commission of the Department of Public Safety and of the First American National Fire Prevention Convention, held in Philadelphia in 1913. When one considers the tremendous fire waste in the United States annually, this is funda- mental preventive work. His efforts in this direction have been constant and unremitting. As trustee of Hobart College, Powell Evans is giving unstinted service, and in addition is contributing generously to the endowment, making possible two large scholarships for the right sort of young men. In 1882 he won a state scholarship which he was denied on account of his youth. It is only natural, therefore, that the need for scholarships should appeal to him. Although he is an extremely busy man, Mr. Evans finds time to serve as director of a national bank and of a trust company, as Vice-

Page 15 text:

VOLUME LVI. 19 17 I 5 President of the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, the largest body of its kind in the United States, and as trustee of the Philadelphia Bureau of Municipal Research. Because he has been impressed so forcibly with the need of trained men for public service, he has arranged for a course of lectures to be given at Hobart next year on the scientific management of cities. Training for public service is a task that our colleges and universities have been slow to shoulder, but now that they have realized this obligation to society, courses are rapidly being installed with the proper field and laboratory work, to provide the country with the kind of men we must have if our great experiment in democracy is to be a real success. Hobart is a pioneer among the smaller colleges in this new endeavor. It is due largely to the broad vision of Powell Evans, '88, that his Alma Mater is among the leaders in this new movement. Written liy P. H. Whai.i'Y, Editor of the l’hil:ulri| lii;i Evening Lodger William Bond Read, who was elected a Trustee of Hobart College in January, 1917, was bom in Plantersville, South Carolina, April 2, 0S77. Graduating from the Porter Military Academy, Charleston, South Carolina, in 1.X95, he entered Hobart in September of the same year, taking the scientific course. He was given the B.S. degree in 1898. Mr. Read was active in college affairs. In his senior year, he was a member of the Varsity eleven and he played on the first lacrosse team to represent Hobart in an intercollegiate contest. He never posed as a brilliant athlete, nor as a brilliant scholar, but he had a way of getting there and a very clear perception of his goal. The old gymnasium had shower baths, in fact, and hot water in theory. An inkling of the ruggedness of Mr. Read’s character may be gathered from the fact that he, alone among the students, braved the icy water in that desolate establishment every morning before breakfast. Thereafter, the world’s cold shoulder could not daunt him. In common with many other Southern men educated at Hobart, whose