John W. Hennessey Jr. ’45

John died Jan. 11, 2018.

He enrolled at Princeton at age 16. He graduated magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. His senior thesis was an argument for comprehensive national health care. He was in Theatre Intime, Whig-Clio, and Campus Club, and won the intramural tennis medal.

John joined the war effort as an officer in the Army. He managed hundreds of service members in the Philippines. After World War II John married Jean Marie Lande and they had two children, John and Martha. He earned an MBA at Harvard Business School and a doctorate in organizational behavior.

John became a professor at Dartmouth and then taught in Switzerland, Turkey, the USSR, and China. He accepted the deanship at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, with the condition that the school admit women.

He founded the Council on Opportunity in Graduate Management Education to increase the number of minority students in MBA programs. He became provost at the University of Vermont, and later interim president. He lost his wife of 56 years in 2004.

John was chairman of the board of Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital and on the board of Americans for Campaign Reform (ACR). He and his colleagues invited former Vermont Gov. Madeleine Kunin to join the ACR, and a year later, in 2006, they married.

His daughter, Martha Hennessey, is a New Hampshire state senator.