In 1989, Don Hamister ’44 and his wife, Margaret, established the Donald B. and Margaret S. Hamister Endowment Fund with a $100,000 donation. The income from the fund was designated for the benefit of the Department of Physics. Over the years, the Hamisters added generously to the fund, the income from which enabled the physics department to purchase technologically advanced equipment and outfit the physics labs in the construction of Rutherford B. Hayes Hall in 2002.
One of four sons of chemical engineer Victor C. Hamister H ’61, Hamister joined his older brother, the late Richard C. Hamister ’42, at the College as a scholarship student. A colleague of my dad’s at Union Carbide was a Kenyon graduate, and he began recruiting us boys as soon as we started high school, says Hamister. Don’s younger brother Kenneth C. Hamister graduated in 1948 while the late David Hamister enrolled with the Class of 1951 but did not graduate.
My family was not wealthy, and the scholarship money provided by the College was very important, he says. While I was not the most outstanding student, I did try to keep my grades up, and I recognized fully the opportunity I was being given.
Hamister may have been more sensitive to the worth of an education than many boys his age, having spent a year following his high-school graduation working for the South East Joslyn Company in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. He applied himself to the task of learning that which is not taught in a school room, as he says. At the time, he had no inkling that his relationship with Joslyn was to be a career-long one.
The United States entered World War II in the middle of Hamister’s sophomore year at Kenyon. While many of the men left to enter the service during the summer of 1942, he remained at the College through January 1943, taking engineering drawing, navigation, and theoretical mechanics courses, and then enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a flier. Returning to Kenyon in 1946, he completed his requirements for graduation. I reached escape velocity in one semester, he laughs.
Don and Peggy, who also served in the navy, married in December 1946, and shortly thereafter Hamister returned to the Joslyn Company as an application engineer in the Cincinnati, Ohio, office. Over the next thirty years, he rose steadily in the company ranks, attaining the post of president and chief executive officer in 1978. The following year, he was also named chairman. Hamister led the company through many years of growth and prosperity during challenging economic times for the nation, retiring as CEO in 1985. He remained chairman until 1994.
My education at Kenyon opened a door for me, says Hamister. Giving back to the institution and to future generations of students at the College was a moral decision for me.
Hamister passed away in 2006.