ATLANTA --- The popular president of one of Atlanta's most prestigious prep schools gave a rousing talk to the faculty about the new year. Hours later, he apparently jumped to his death from the eighth floor of a hotel.
Harry C. Payne, 60, left behind short letters to his family and the board chairman of the Woodward Academy. But friends and colleagues were still baffled by the suicide of the highly accomplished and ordinarily upbeat man.
"It's just one of these great unexplained tragedies in life -- an example of what all you don't know about the kind of pain some people live with," said Ben Johnson, chairman at the 2,850-student school.
Mr. Payne came to Woodward in 2000 after resigning abruptly from elite Williams College in Massachusetts, where at the time he was the highest-paid college president in the country, with more than $878,000 in salary and benefits as part of special package related to his departure, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
On Monday, he gave a speech at a Woodward Academy faculty and staff luncheon, and Mr. Johnson said he seemed upbeat and "was at the top of his game." Hours later, Mr. Payne's body was found outside the Marriott Courtyard in midtown Atlanta.
Police said that when officers entered his eighth-floor hotel room, they found an opened package of steak knives and bloody tissue on a counter, in addition to a note to police and two or three envelopes, none of which have been made public.
The medical examiner's office ruled the death a suicide.
Mr. Johnson said he got a short note that was typewritten and signed, and the other letters were for Mr. Payne's wife and two sons, both of whom teach at Stanford University. He would not discuss exactly what his letter said, except to say that it "reflected a deep depression." The educator said he did not know Mr. Payne was depressed.
At Williams, Mr. Payne was credited with overseeing the creation of a new science center, opening a new student center and nearly doubling the endowment to $800 million. A room and a professorship at the college bear his name.
He previously was president of Hamilton College in New York and provost at Haverford College in Pennsylvania.
He had a doctorate in history from Yale and for 12 years taught history at Colgate University. He wrote and edited many books and articles, chiefly on 18th-century European intellectual history.
Nancy McIntire, who was Mr. Payne's administrative assistant at Williams, said she never detected depression in him.
"Absolutely mysterious," she said of his death. "He was a wonderful boss. I liked working with him a lot. He was very accessible. He had a wonderful sense of humor. And he was very, very smart."
Comments
Seems to me the man sensed life was an exercise in futility. I believe this guy absorbed so much of "European intellectual history" or, to put it bluntly, the history of angst-ridden life which the European intelegentsia is notorious for. What a sad ending to an illustrious life. Prozac, where were you when we needed you?
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