William Carrington Finch (21 December 1909–13 June 2007), president of Emory and Henry College, was born in Chase City, Mecklenburg County, and was the son of Adam Tyree Finch, a physician, and Elizabeth Dinwiddie Morton Finch. He received a B.A. from Hampden-Sydney College in 1929. Finch began teaching at Randolph Macon Academy, in Bedford, and later moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he served as headmaster of the Boys' School of Saint Paul's Parish (later Saint Paul's School). On 19 August 1937 he married Lucy Everett Bedinger, in Boydton, Mecklenburg County. They had two sons.

Intent on pursuing graduate work in religion, Finch earned an S.T.B. from the Biblical Seminary in New York (later the New York Theological Seminary) in 1934 and a Th.M. from Richmond's Union Theological Seminary in 1936. In 1934 the Virginia Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South admitted him on trial. Finch served a Richmond church in that year and then began classes at Drew University, which in 1940 awarded him a Ph.D. in religion. He studied at the University of Oxford in 1937 and at the University of Zürich in 1938. In the latter year Finch began his career in higher education at Oklahoma City University, where he served as an assistant professor of religion and dean of students. In 1940 he was ordained as a deacon and in 1941 he was ordained a minister.

In 1941 Finch joined the faculty of Southwestern University, in Georgetown, Texas. Interrupted only by a brief stint as a naval chaplain during World War II, he spent eighteen years at the college, initially as a religion professor and later as the president's executive assistant. The board of trustees elected him as acting president in September 1949 and named him president the following year. Regarded as caring and compassionate, Finch emphasized undergraduate liberal arts instruction, increased the endowment, and launched a major building initiative. Although classroom integration occurred under a successor, Finch worked for racial integration of campus athletic and cultural events. He faced a major challenge in dealing with the university's popular football program, which by the 1950s had created a financial drain on the school and which the board of trustees later abolished. He received an honorary doctorate of laws from Hampden-Sydney College in 1955.

Finch became dean of the divinity school at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1961. He arrived in the aftermath of the expulsion of a student who had taken part in civil rights sit-ins, university action that had prompted several faculty members to threaten resignation and the dean of the divinity school to resign. As Finch guided the school through this tumultuous period, he came to dislike working in a large university and sought to return to a small liberal arts college where he could work more closely with undergraduate students. Shortly after the presidency of Emory and Henry College, located in Washington County, Virginia, became vacant in 1964, the school's board of trustees learned of Finch's availability and elected him president in October. He took office in February 1965.

Finch had six productive years at Emory and Henry. Building on the work of his predecessor, Earl Gladstone Hunt Jr., he finished securing funds to construct a new library. Although Finch admitted that he did not like fund-raising, he proved successful at it and launched a capital campaign that included money for a new athletic center, which helped enable Emory and Henry to join the National Collegiate Athletic Association. He replaced the two-semester academic year with a schedule under which students took three courses in each of three eleven-week terms. A heart attack in November 1967 did not prevent Finch from returning to his duties, but a small decline in enrollment in 1969, growing student unrest on a national level late in the 1960s, a missed opportunity to cultivate a potential donor, and the sudden departure of a popular football coach who had disagreed with Finch about scholarship policies all played a role in Finch's decision in May 1970 to retire effective 1 December of that year.

Finch returned to Nashville, where he worked part-time as an adviser to the Methodist General Board of Education (beginning in 1973 the Board of Higher Education and Ministry), spent time bird watching, and volunteered serving charitable causes. In 1974 he was named to the Hampden-Sydney College board of trustees and the following year received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Emory and Henry College. William Carrington Finch died in Nashville on 13 June 2007. His remains were returned to Mecklenburg County for burial in the family plot at the cemetery of Boydton Presbyterian Church. A religion award at Hampden-Sydney College, a faculty award and chapel plaza at Southwestern University, and a faculty award at Emory and Henry College honor him.

Sources Consulted:
Finch oral history interview with author, 21 Feb. 2006, transcription in Dictionary of Virginia Biography Files (with birth date); Birth Certificate, Mecklenburg Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA); BVS Marriage Register, Mecklenburg Co.; Hampden-Sydney Alumni Association Record 12 (Oct. 1937): 9, and 39 (Jan. 1965): 19–20 (portrait); New York Times, 20 Aug. 1937; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 13 May 1950, 10 Oct. 1964, 28 Oct. 1965, 3 Apr. 1970, 4 Apr. 1974; Emory and Henry College White Topper, 27 Oct. 1964, 9 Feb. 1965, 2 May 1969, 12 Jan., 13 Nov. 1970; board of trustees minutes, Emory and Henry College Archives, Frederick Thrasher Kelly Library; obituaries in Nashville Tennessean, 13 June 2007, Austin American-Statesman, 16 June 2007, and Southwestern Magazine 19 (2007): 4.

Photograph in Hampden-Sydney College Kaleidoscope, 1929.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Robert J. Vejnar II.

How to cite this page:
Robert J. Vejnar II, "William Carrington Finch (1909–2007)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2023 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Finch_William_Carrington, accessed [today's date]).

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