Reunion Profiles
Charlie Williams
(MBA ’39, DCS ’52)
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| Photo by Webb Chappell |
The son of a small-town banker, Charlie Williams grew up in rural West Virginia, attended Washington and Lee University, and taught for more than 39 years at HBS. The School’s much-revered George Gund Professor of Commercial Banking, Emeritus, he saw 27 former students become HBS professors and many others go on to distinguished careers in financial services. Williams retired in 1986.
When the Class of 1939 graduated from HBS, business and employment were still in a slump, salaries were at Depression levels, and war clouds were on the horizon. I went to work at Manufacturers Trust in New York, before joining the Navy in 1941, before Pearl Harbor.
A few months later, I was aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lexington when Japanese planes attacked us in the Battle of the Coral Sea. I was a supply and disbursing officer, and I’d gone up to the bridge to report that I couldn’t get to my safe and its $300,000 in cash — that proved of little interest to the bridge, given the situation. Then came the order to abandon ship. A destroyer had maneuvered alongside to evacuate our wounded first, and then our pilots. One of the senior aviators called to me, “Come along with us!” I grabbed a line and swung Tarzan-style from our flight deck over to the destroyer’s bridge. Later, from two miles away, I instinctively ducked as a huge explosion ripped the Lexington, and she sank.
Ironically, I was sent back to HBS to teach in the Naval Supply Corps School. But I later returned to sea and was aboard the cruiser USS Topeka in 1945 when the ship received President Truman’s announcement of the dropping of the atom bomb. As the ship’s announcer, I read Truman’s words over the PA system to the entire crew. When I finished, there was silence. Then there came a roar from below decks that I will never forget — the men understood that no invasion of Japan would be necessary and that the war’s end was near.
In 1947, I was discharged from the Navy and began teaching at HBS ten days later. As we all know, HBS is a very special place, in large part because of the quality of the students, research programs, and leadership it’s had over the years. For me, the classroom was my favorite place. My chief emphasis was teaching an approach, not so much facts or theories. I especially enjoyed the back-and-forth with students and discussing cases where I wasn’t sure of the answer. My goals were straightforward: to get my students to think through a problem, be consistent in their analysis, and be prepared to defend their point of view. — GE
