Robert Y. Kimball, a former assistant dean at Tuck who was popular both with students and the companies in which he helped place so many of them, died November 20, 2007, in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 84. Kimball was a 1946 graduate of Dartmouth and a 1948 graduate of Tuck. His Dartmouth studies were interrupted during World War II , when he left to serve in the Naval Air Corps before returning to complete his degree.
Kimball married Jacqueline Winship while completing his studies at Tuck, and, after his graduation, the couple moved back to his native Massachusetts, where Kimball worked for the BF Goodrich Company for the next 15 years. In 1963, the Kimballs returned to Hanover with their four daughters in tow, and Bob took a job as assistant to Dartmouth President John Sloan Dickey. He would remain in Hanover for 42 more years.
It wasn’t long, however, before Kimball moved from his position at Dartmouth to a position at Tuck. He became a key administrator at a time when the school’s diverse administrative functions were handled by just a handful of people.
"When I became dean in June 1968, Bob was a most reliable and selfless advisor, and my trust in him bore important fruit. When, in the summer of 1968, we decided to admit women to the MBA program, three years before the Dartmouth trustees voted on coeducation, Bob was immediately a strong advocate, even though some of his classmates from the 1940s had mixed feelings and preferred to wait."
Later in 1968, Kimball gained wide recognition in the region not for his work at Tuck but as the result of tragedy. On October 25 of that year, he was one of 42 people on board Northeast Airlines Flight 946 traveling from Boston, Mass., to Montpelier, Vt., with one scheduled stop in Lebanon, N.H. Just eight miles out and minutes from landing in Lebanon, where Kimball was to deplane, the aircraft slammed into the side of Moose Mountain in Etna, N.H., and broke apart, 32 of the people on board were killed.
Only the 10 people who were sitting in the tail section of the plane survived—among them Kimball. Local news reports from the time indicate that Kimball found himself sitting on the ground after the crash, surrounded by flames. Those reports credit Kimball and fellow survivor Dr. Richard Veech, both of whom were injured, with climbing up the steep hillside to the place where the tail came to rest and helping other survivors out of the wreckage.
After his recovery, Kimball returned to Tuck with his characteristic enthusiasm intact. "Bob was an important architect of professionalism in many parts of Tuck administrative life," Hennessey recalls. "He brought to the work of the school optimism, common sense, and an abiding love of Tuck and Dartmouth, and he radiated a joie de vivre that warmed us all."
Kimball is survived by Jacqueline; their four daughters, Holly Miner, Susan Kimball, Patty Bragg, and Sandy Kimball; two sons-in-law; and eight grandchildren.His close colleague Dean Emeritus John Hennessey shares memories of those years. "Bob and I first became colleagues in the 1960s," he says, "when our role model, Karl Hill, was the Tuck dean. As associate dean, my responsibilities were on the academic side, while Bob, the assistant dean, ranged across all parts of students’ lives outside the classroom. On his recommendation, we eventually hired a director of admissions and student affairs, and Bob concentrated on greatly expanding our reach in career planning, job placement, and alumni affairs.
