Willard Straight Hall was named for Willard Dickerman Straight (class of 1901) who served in WWI. He left a large portion of his estate to Cornell for the purpose of building what would become one of the first student unions in the country. As one of the first college unions in the United States, this Gothic structure was modeled after Hart House at the University of Toronto. Straight instructed his wife to use his money,”…to make Cornell a more human place.” Willard Straight Hall is now considered to be the hub of the university campus activities.
In 1897 Willard Straight enrolled at Cornell University and graduated in 1901 with a degree in architecture. While a student at Cornell, he joined Delta Tau Delta, edited and contributed to several publications, and helped to organize Dragon Day, an annual architecture students’ event. After graduation, he served as a trustee of Cornell. Following the death of his good friend, Henry Schoellkopf, in 1912 Straight donated $100,000 (equivalent to $2,596,000 in 2018) to construct the Schoellkopf Memorial Hall in his honor. Willard Straight was involved with the Preparedness
Movement, a campaign led by Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt to strengthen the military of the United States after the outbreak of World War I, and he attended the July 1915 Citizens’ Military Training Camp in Plattsburgh, New York. When the United States entered World War I two years later, Straight joined the United States Army; and served first stateside and later in France with the Adjutant General’s Corps and First Army. For his service, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and the rank of Major. On December 1, 1918, Straight died of complications with Spanish influenza in Paris where he was arranging the arrival of the American mission to the Paris Peace Conference. After Willard Straight’s death his wife made a substantial
donation to Cornell for the purpose of building our first student union building, Willard Straight Hall.
Willard Straight’s son, Whitney Straight, served in WWII. Becoming a British citizen in 1936, he joined the RAF in 1939; suffered a head wound in Norway in May, 1940; and had been detailed as personal air assistant to the Duke of Kent. He was shot down and killed in his Hurricane plane after a raid on German shipping along the French coast, Aug 1 1941. The British government awarded him the distinguished flying cross August 8, reporting that he had not yet been heard from. According to reports from other pilots in his squadron, as his plane belched black smoke, the twenty–nine–year–old squadron leader reported by interplane phone in a calm, clear voice that he was hit, was going to make a forced landing, and ordered his squadron to return to its base.
An archive of Willard Straight’s papers are available online at: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMM01260.html