John H. T. Wilson (1934-2010)

John H.T. Wilson, former Union Settlement Board Chair, who served for over 40 years on our Board and Advisory Council, died on August 12th, 2010. His leadership, generosity, and commitment to the East Harlem community will be greatly missed.   

The Three Roommates:
Bevis Longstreth, Slade Mills, and John H.T. Wilson 
A Remembrance by Slade Mills 

 
To set the scene: we graduated from Princeton in 1956, where we were roommates for two years. John Hill Wilson went into the Army and then to Harvard Business School in 1958, graduating in 1960. Bevis Longstreth went into the Marine Corps and then the Harvard Law School. I went into the Navy in 1956, came out at the end of 1959 and went to work immediately for Rheem International. So we were all starting out with the business of making a living roughly fifty years ago.

Bevis started as a lawyer at Debevoise Plimpton, where Stanley Resor was a partner. However, Stan Resor’s service on the Union Settlement Board doesn’t explain Bevis’ involvement. He was a close friend of Walter Lord, the pre-eminent historian, and it was through Walter’s encouragement and support that Bevis came to the Settlement Board. At Debevoise he found a culture which encouraged pro-bono work. Later, when Bevis was asked to serve as the Board’s Chairman, he went to the Managing Partner, Whitney Debevoise, and said that the Union Settlement assignment would take a full day a week from his schedule. The answer was unhesitating, "You have to do it." With that encouragement Bevis served as Chairman - perhaps the youngest in history - from 1966 to 1968.

During that time John Hill was establishing himself at Morgan Stanley, where the culture was different from Debevoise. Investment banks in the early sixties did not place great store in pro-bono work. Business was the job of business. Young associates were not encouraged to do good works. But John Hill and Bevis were close friends, talked regularly, and clearly John Hill shared the values which motivated Bevis and his Debevoise colleagues. He followed Bevis onto the Union Settlement Association Board, and they worked together for several years before Bevis resigned.

From the beginning John Hill contributed both time - of which he had little but made much - and his inexhaustible store of good humor and good sense. With time out for a stint in Paris with Morgan Stanley in the 1970s he devoted himself to Union Settlement to such an extent that he was named Chairman in 1976, a position he held for two years. After that he continued for many years as a major presence on the Board. Late in his tenure, when he had already shifted his focus to his work as Chair of the Environmental Defense Fund, he made the largest single gift in the history of Union Settlement Association to plug a serious deficit gap.

Meanwhile, as Bevis and John ascended rapidly in the hierarchy of the world's eminent lawyers and investment bankers, I concentrated on a career in international business, which took us to live in Chile, Mexico and Italy. The latter assignment coincided with the Wilsons' sojourn in Paris. Some years later, after we all returned to New York, John Hill suggested in a low key but persuasive way that I might be interested in the work that was being done up on 104th Street. I wandered one day into the Adult Education office of Maria Quiroga, and thus began my involvement with the Settlement. While Bevis and John Hill had unmatched skills in their respective professions, my time working in Spain and South America had given me a reasonable command of Spanish, which was put to good use when I worked with Maria and Pancho.

It should not go unmentioned that yet another of our Princeton roommates made a significant contribution to Union Settlement. Jack Fritts, another eminent New York lawyer, is the father of Katherine, who was one of our most effective Treasurers and whose service to Union Settlement only ended when she moved to Atlanta with Ernst & Young. There were altogether seven roommates in our suite of rooms in college, so the fact that a majority of them had such strong ties to Union Settlement says something - apparently we all believed what we were told at Princeton about service to the nation, and Union Settlement gave us all an opportunity to do something about that.