Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Honoring 200 Years of Service

A new book, authored by alums and released during Bicentennial Weekend, documents the stories of HWS servicemembers.

The contributions and sacrifices of Hobart and William Smith veterans are memorialized on campus — from a plaque on Coxe Hall to a memorial bench near the flagpole on the Quad. Adding historical context and firsthand details to these markers, Hobart and William Smith Colleges’ Legacy of Military Service narrates the institution’s military connections, with reflections from 117 active and retired servicemembers.

Authored by Col. C.R. Anderegg ’67 and Lt. Col. John Norvell ’66, P’99, P’02, with a foreword by Lt. Gen. Jack Woodward ’68 and an afterword by Col. Katherine Platoni ’74, the book captures the Colleges’ longstanding connection to the U.S. Armed Forces, dating to Hobart’s founding in 1822 (early trustees were veterans of the American Revolution and the War of 1812; students served soon after). Continuing through the Civil War, World War I and II, Vietnam and beyond, the book captures the ways a Hobart and William Smith education has resonated with and enriched alums’ military service, and vice versa. It reveals, as Platoni writes in the afterword, “unmistakable underpinnings” of public service at HWS — an ethos that leads “students to rise to challenges and causes far beyond measure, [with] devotion to enterprises that have and will continue to impact the world in rather enormous ways.”

Read the book online at hws.edu/hobart-bicentennial/veterans-book.aspx.