Kelsey Professorship

A bequest of $750,000 has been received by the College to establish the Preston H. Kelsey '25 Professorship of Religion. The bequest was part of a trust fund set up during his lifetime by Mr. Kelsey, a prominent West Coast insurance executive, who died February 10, 1971.

Mr. Kelsey, after graduation from Dartmouth in 1925, was employed by the Sun Insurance Company, Ltd. and the American Insurance Company of Newark before joining the insurance brokerage firm of Marsh and McLennan, Inc. in 1929. He was named executive vice president in 1946 and transferred to San Francisco to head the West Coast operations of the company. He served as vice chairman of the board of that firm until his retirement in 1964, after which he continued as director. He lived in retirement at Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., where his widow, Mary, will continue to make her residence.

A director of the Episcopal Diocese of California, Mr. Kelsey had been vestryman, senior warden, and treasurer of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church of San Mateo. He also served on Bishop Pike's Lay Advisory Committee. For his service and support to Scripps Memorial Hospital, he was presented the hospital's Excalibur Humanitarian Award in 1968. He was vice president of the board of directors and provided the hospital with a Cardiac Intensive Care Unit in memory of his first wife, Suzanne Van Antwerp Kelsey, who died in 1967.

Mr. Kelsey served the College as class agent and as a member of the Major Gifts Committee of the Third Century Fund. He played an important part also in the College's first major capital gifts campaign, 1957-59, and filled the post of West Coast Regional Chairman. His two Dartmouth sons are Thomas V. A. Kelsey '54, vice president of Chubb & Son, Inc., New York, and the Rev. Preston T. Kelsey II '5B, rector of St. Albans Episcopal Church in Albany, Calif.