G. Keith Funston

G. Keith Funston '32 was president of Trinity College in the mid-twentieth century, from 1945 to 1951.

Funston was born on October 12, 1910, in Waterloo, Iowa. He attended Trinity College from 1928 to 1932. While a student at Trinity, he worked as a chauffeur to the College’s president at the time, Remsen Brinckerhoff Ogilby. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was the president of the senior honor society. In 1932, Funston graduated valedictorian from Trinity with a B.A. in economics and history. After graduating from the Harvard Business School, he entered a business career. In early 1944, he became an assistant director of the Office of Procurement and Material in the United States Navy's Industrial Readjustment Branch, with the rank of lieutenant commander. In June 1944, Funston, not even 35-years-old at the time, was appointed president of Trinity College, though he remained in the military service through the end of World War II.

George Keith Funston, ca. 1945. Photo credit: Fabian Bachrach, courtesy of Trinity College Archives

In November of 1945, after he was released from his wartime duties, Funston officially took office as the president of Trinity. Referred to casually as “Prexy” by students as his predecessor had been, Funston cared greatly about the character of the College. He made a number of administrative adjustments, including bolstering the College’s finances through successful fundraising. As long as members of the teaching faculty could not be “proved” to be members of the Communist Party, he argued that the American people “might listen with an open mind as educators rightfully decry witchhunts, teacher loyalty oaths, and prescribed textbooks.” Funston also helped to establish the chaplaincy, the public relations and student placement offices, as well as doubling the enrollment during the first wave of the G.I. Bill. Even a Veterans and Career Counselor was hired temporarily to meet demand. At the same time, the average age of alumni dropped steadily, leading to a bit of difficulty funding the Annual Fund.

Additionally, the combined endowment and physical plant value rose from $4 million to $6 million during his administration. He oversaw the creation of an engineering laboratory, a dormitory that was dedicated Elton Hall, and a field house, but perhaps the most impressive building was the new library for which ground was broken in 1950. Unrelatedly, Funston was responsible for bringing the two cannons from the U.S.S. Hartford, a Civil War steam-powered sloop, to campus as a donation from the Hartford Public Works Department. In 1951, Funston left Trinity College to become the president of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). A year later, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Trinity.

Funston is well known for his achievements during his time on Wall Street. Given that the position of president of the NYSE was still fairly new, there were few roadmaps for success. Buoyed by the success of the United States in WWII, Funston tied individual stock ownership rhetorically to patriotism, proclaiming himself, “salesman of shares in America.” With a network of business contacts in both the corporate world and from his time serving on the War Board in Washington, D.C., Funston's leadership helped to increase the investment in corporate stocks from a little over six million in 1951 to more than 22 million by 1967, when he left the Exchange. Though Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. president at the time, said, “The president of the stock exchange is the second worst job in America,” Funston had many promising ideas and numerous achievements during his tenure. On May 15, 1992, at the age of 81, G. Keith Funston died of a heart attack in Greenwich, Connecticut.