Gifts

Friends Honor Tigers Who Have Touched Their Lives

November 1, 2006

Hugh de N. Wynne ’39 *40 and Leonard S. Kim ’85 attended Princeton nearly 50 years apart, but both were honored by friends and classmates who were inspired by them.

“Hugh Wynne was a Tiger, through and through,” said Steven J. Luttrell, who was Wynne’s next-door neighbor as a child, and is now CEO and cofounder of the investment management firm Drake Management LLC in New York.

The two met almost 40 years ago, when Luttrell was only two years old and living in Tripoli, Libya. Wynne (known as “Bud” to generations of Princetonians) and Luttrell’s father were both posted there as heads of regional operations of major oil companies. A long-lasting friendship between the families grew, and Wynne became Luttrell’s friend and mentor.

To show his appreciation, Luttrell has established a $100,000 Annual Giving endowment in honor of Wynne, who died in 2007. The fund will generate yearly proceeds for AG on behalf of the Class of 1939. It is a fitting tribute to a tireless Princeton champion who served in roles ranging from president of his class to chair of the Princetoniana Committee to long time leader of Annual Giving, at both the class and national level.

“At Christmas time, I’d even seen him wearing an orange-and-black tie instead of one with Santa Claus,” Luttrell says. “Princeton meant a lot to him, and this gift memorializes that.”

An equally thoughtful gift has been established in the name of Leonard Kim, who died in 2005 after a battle with lung cancer. Aware of his illness, Kim’s friends and classmates decided that a scholarship fund would be the best way to honor their beloved friend, whose membership in ROTC helped fund his own Princeton education.

Kim, who served as president of the Princeton Footnotes a cappella group when he was an undergraduate and later organized reunions of the singers, kept in close touch with his friends after graduating. One of them, James F. Young ’85, said raising the $50,000 minimum needed to establish a named scholarship simply entailed turning to the many people whose lives Kim had touched, including members of the Footnotes and Kim’s colleagues at General Electric, where he served as vice president and chief information officer for GE Global Consumer Finance.

In 2005, Kim attended his 20th Reunion and was overwhelmed when told about the scholarship. “He was so touched,” said his wife, Christine H. Kim. “I was married to him for 20 years, and it was the hardest I had ever seen him cry.” The first Leonard Kim Scholar was named in Fall 2006.