1913

Kendall Winship, one of the outstanding men of the Class of 1913, had a remarkably full and highly successful life before his early death in 1933. At Dartmouth, Ken played both varsity football and basketball. After graduating from Tuck School in 1914, he worked for the Great Northern Railroad in Minnesota until 1916, joined the Minnesota National Guard, and was on the Mexican border as second lieutenant in the Minnesota Field Artillery. In WWI Ken was commissioned a captain of the 339th Field Artillery and served overseas as a battery commander.

After discharge in 1919, Ken went to Tulsa, Okla., working first for the National Supply Company, then the Roxanna Petroleum Corporation, and in 1921 for the Pittsburg Gulf Oil Company in Pittsburg. He traveled in Mexico for that company, and still later for the Venezuela Gulf Oil Company, as general agent in Venezuela.

By 1931 he had returned to Tulsa, where he was elected director and vice president of Gypsy Oil Company and Gulf Pipeline Company, director of the American Petroleum Institute and of the Mid-Continental Oil and Gas Association, director of the Tulsa Riding and Hunt Club, and director of Skelly Stadium Corporation of the University of Tulsa. Ken was an ardent golfer and a good-natured story teller in the locker room of the Tulsa Country Club.

Our records reveal a rare tribute to Ken written by a friend at the time of his death:

"When all is said and done, the question is not how long we stay here. In the stretches of time, the allotted three score and ten is but a flash. Whether it be shorter or longer than the allotment is really of minute importance. The question is, what did we do with the time we were given?

"Ken did as much with his years as any man I know. A graduate of Dartmouth, he took two years from his life and laid it upon the altar of his country. He was the best officer I know who came out of civic life. Returning, he started in at the bottom of a highly competitive industry. His native ability, his industry, his loyalty, were such that in a few years he was entrusted with the Herculean task of taming the tropics (Venezuela). He tamed it. He built a city. He ministered to his men with a firm but just hand. He drained a princely fortune from the resources of the earth. He then was entrusted with responsibilities here, that not one man in a million are entrusted with. He discharged those duties with fidelity and rare ability. Two of the biggest Mid-Continental Oil executives have told me that they had never known a man whom everybody thought so well of as Ken. With it all, he found time to help the youth in connection with Dartmouth. He kept men on the payroll that their families might not want. He. fought their battles with those higher up and so, as my mind wanders back to that great day he and I spent together fifteen years ago today, when the guns ceased their fire at 11:00 o'clock, I think that after all, all is well. He did as much for his country as thousands who did not come back from France. He offered to his country all he had - his life. He was spared long enough to make a conspicuous place for himself in the world. I do not pretend to penetrate the veil. I have an abiding faith in the existence of God. Perhaps He needed him for a more important task."

Addison L. Winship II '42, vice president of Dartmouth, is Ken's nephew.

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