Harry C. Payne, at 60; led Williams College from '94-'99

Harry C. Payne in a photo taken at Wiliams College. (Williams College)

With a light touch, Hank Payne used his expansive intellect to guide the administrations of three colleges and a private school.

"In an unusually modest, self-effacing way, he was a very winsome person," said Ben Johnson, chairman of the governing board at Woodward Academy in Atlanta, where Dr. Payne served as president. "He could draw you into a conversation in ways that you didn't even know you were being drawn into it. He was a master of understatement. He could take an idea and deal with it in a very elegant way that you had never dreamed of."

Dr. Payne, who was president of Williams College from 1994 to 1999, took his own life Monday in Atlanta. He was 60 and had lived in the city.

"He was a brilliant man," said David Lionel Smith, an English professor at Williams who was dean of faculty during most of Dr. Payne's tenure as president. "He had an amazing intellectual gift. He was extraordinarily quick and was able to see things with a great clarity, and he was an accomplished problem-solver."

Harry C. Payne grew up in Worcester and went to Yale, where according to the Woodward Academy website he received bachelor's and master's degrees in 1969 and a doctorate in history in 1973.

"Yes, I did protest against the Vietnam War," he told the Atlanta Jewish Times in October 2001, but added that he largely lived a scholarly life. "I had my nose in a book in the library most of the time."

After Yale, Dr. Payne began teaching at Colgate University in Hamilton, a small town in central New York where he and his wife, Deborah, experienced some culture shock.

"At the time, I had people on staff coming up to me saying that I was the first Jew on the faculty in 20 years," he told the Atlanta Jewish Times. "My wife and I were much called upon to explain the Jewish holidays."

A dozen years of teaching was followed by a move to Haverford College outside Philadelphia, where Dr. Payne was provost and served as acting president for a year.

"I had begun to be drawn into administration and discovered that I enjoyed it," he told the Atlanta publication. "There is always a certain amount of adventure; every day is different."

In 1988, he was named president of Hamilton College and returned to live in rural central New York. Six years later, he became president of Williams.

"He was exceptionally perceptive at looking at an institution and how it functioned and at seeing its strengths and weaknesses," Smith said. "I believe that one of his enduring contributions to the college is the work he did as the executive officer in analyzing the weaknesses in the Williams administration and at finding solutions. He left the college a more fundamentally sound institution in its administrative functioning. That's the kind of contribution that is rarely appreciated."

Williams announced in January 1999 that Dr. Payne would step down as president in June 2000, then he left in October, several months earlier than expected. In July 2000 he became president of Woodward Academy.

"It was a more natural segue than meets the eye," he told the Atlanta Jewish Times. "I needed a change. I had basically been going to college for the past 35 years. I had been looking for a job in the foundation world, and then I just sort of happened across the Woodward position."

Johnson suggested that Dr. Payne may have been attracted by more than just the new challenge of running a private school.

"One of the things that sealed the deal was that we played a round of golf in the middle of December in our shirtsleeves," he said of the hiring process.

The academy welcomed the arrival of Dr. Payne, who Johnson said "brought an intellectual credibility to independent education that was unique. There was nobody in independent education who could hold a candle to Hank Payne in terms of credentials."

Dr. Payne's leadership allowed the school to more easily attract top candidates, Johnson said.

"He would have a national search and could get the very best," he said. "People would come from wherever they were because they wanted to work for Hank Payne. People loved to work for him because they learned so much, and they loved to work for him because he had such a light touch in terms of management style."

As he had at the colleges he led, Dr. Payne taught a class at Woodward and chose as his topic Atlanta history, in part as a way to learn about his adopted home, Johnson said.

"He had this sort of infectious desire to learn that manifested itself in him, and by example in other people," Johnson said. "I tell people he's the kind of person who takes piano lessons at 59. He took up piano lessons just like a first-grader. I told that at the graveside service, and a woman walked up after and said: 'I want to introduce myself. I'm the piano teacher.' I said, "Was he doing well? And she said, 'Very well.' "

In addition to his wife, Dr. Payne leaves two sons, Jonathan of Los Altos, Calif., and Samuel of San Francisco; and a brother, Richard of Andover.

Services have been held.