Bill Robertson ’56 Makes Bequest to Thayer

Bill Robertson ’56, Maurice Seymour, and Louise Saul

“As a scholarship student, I feel a special responsibility to pay forward the advantages given to me,” says Bill Robertson ’56, a retired computer systems expert who is donating a portion of his estate to Thayer.

Bill grew up just four miles from campus, in the town of Quincy. Nobody in his family had attended college, and Bill did not expect to attend a prep school such as Thayer. But he heard about scholarship opportunities from a faculty member who attended his church, and he applied for and received a three-year full-tuition scholarship for students interested in math and science that was funded by the Raytheon Company—the defense contractor based in nearby Waltham.

“I was excited but also a little frightened,” Bill recalls. “I had to work pretty hard—much harder than in public schools where I never had to study much.”

Bill did well enough at Thayer to receive a full scholarship from a top academic institution: Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva Springs, New York.

“Thayer really prepared me very well for college,” Bill says, “especially mathematics with Maurice Seymour (who taught at Thayer for more than 30 years) and English with Louise Saul (head of the English department from 1955-66); she did an excellent job of preparing us for the SAT.”

He graduated from Hobart in 1960 with a double major in math and English, calling the combination “schizophrenic left brain/right brain stuff but the combination of logic & language served me well.” After two years in the Army he joined an insurance company in Atlanta and spent his entire career in IT there; he retired in 1998 and two years later moved to Lake County, Florida, where he spends a lot of time kayaking.

“A percentage of my estate will be added to the Class of ’56 endowment fund for Thayer,” Bill says. “I know annual giving is important, and I do that regularly. But I really feel great to give to an endowment that I know will be benefiting students a hundred years from now.”

He also strongly supports the strategy of giving from one’s IRA—and has been making annual IRA charitable rollover gifts to build a scholarship endowment fund at Hobart. Because the gift goes straight to the charitable recipient, the donor’s taxable income is reduced.

“IRA charitable rollovers are a tremendous but underused strategy well beyond the most obvious benefit to those who no longer itemize their deductions,” he says.