‘A Dashing Personality’: Remembering Willard Straight 1901
By Beth Saulnier & Alexandra Bond ’12
More than a century ago—on December 1, 1918—Willard Straight 1901 passed away in France from complications of the Spanish flu, shortly after the armistice that ended World War I. Just 38, he left behind three small children and a heartbroken widow, who resolved to fulfill the charge he’d left her in his will.
“My wife, Dorothy Payne Whitney Straight, is to be unrestrained in the possession and enjoyment of my entire property and estate,” the document read.
“I nevertheless desire her to do such thing or things for Cornell University as she may think most fitting and useful to make the same a more human place.”
It was Dorothy, an heiress and member of the prominent Whitney family, who conceived the idea of a building devoted to the nonacademic pursuits that enrich student life. Willard Straight Hall, one of the nation’s first student unions, opened on November 18, 1925.