The Emory Legacy of Robert Winship Woodruff

One day in the last decade of the twentieth century,

an anonymous caller informed Emory police that a bomb would go off “in the Woodruff Building.” The caller’s unfortunate imprecision emptied six buildings—all named for Robert W. Woodruff or a member of his family.

In the first decade of this century, Robert Woodruff matriculated at Emory College, which was then still located in Oxford. Having enrolled in September 1908, by December he had sufficiently impressed the faculty with the indifference of his efforts, that President James Dickey felt compelled to write to Robert’s father, Ernest. All things considered, the president wrote, it might be better for everyone if Robert sat out the next term. That Dickey sent the letter is a testimony to the rigor of the college and to its president’s intention to uphold standards; for Ernest Woodruff was a formidable presence in Atlanta and one of the wealthiest men in the state. President of Trust Company of Georgia (now SunTrust Banks), he was a cunning deal-maker and, in 1919, would form the syndicate that bought The Coca-Cola Company from Asa Candler’s children for $25 million.

As it happened, young Robert was only too happy to oblige President Dickey’s wishes. Commerce, not scholarship, was where his heart lay, and he was tired of complaining in vain to his father about a leaky dorm room ceiling, aching eyes from all the reading, and—maybe worst of all—insufficient funds. But one cannot say he never looked back.

On one occasion in the 1980s, then-President James Laney asked Woodruff, half in jest, “Mr. Woodruff, have you ever thought about what would have happened if you had stayed and finished at Emory?” Woodruff considered the question briefly and then replied, “Yes, I think it would have slowed me down about four years.”

Robert Woodruff was born December 6, 1889, the scion of one of Atlanta’s wealthiest families, inheriting his mother’s shyness and melancholy and his father’s shrewd stubbornness. Never a good student (and perhaps dyslexic), he nevertheless exhibited a native quickness of mind and what one biographer, Frederick Allen, has called “a definite touch of Tom Sawyer about him”—a wily instinct for making the most of circumstances, charming others while advancing his own interests.

His failure at Emory led to his donning overalls and working as a common laborer at the General Pipe and Foundry Company. But before long, his obvious abilities at selling a product lifted his prospects, and by 1922—a mere decade later than his intended graduation from Emory—he was vice-president and heir-apparent to Walter White as president of the White Motor Company, in Cleveland, Ohio. The next year, taking a $50,000 cut in pay, and claiming not to “know any more about the soft drink business than a pig knows about Sunday,” he accepted his father’s entreaties to become president of The Coca-Cola Company.

The remarkable story of Woodruff’s career at Coca-Cola is told well elsewhere, and it is a story worth reading, not only for what it says about the man himself, but for what it tells of his impact on the city and the University to which he contributed so much. Considering the Puritan New England roots of his father, Ernest Woodruff, who moved to Atlanta from Connecticut, Robert’s determination to see a great city and a great university in the heart of the South makes sense. It was his spiritual ancestor, the great Calvinist John Winthrop, who wanted to make Boston a city on a hill that would serve as a beacon for the world. Robert Woodruff, a good Calvinist Presbyterian all his life, knew what a beacon could do to light the way for humankind. To the University’s great fortune, Robert Woodruff poured a great deal—but not most—of his oil into Emory’s lamp.

Like Asa Candler, Woodruff was aided greatly by a band of like-minded men and women who shared his commitment, often out of enlightened self-interest. Toward the end of his long life, Woodruff once commented on his project in south Georgia to eliminate the impact of malaria on farmers around his plantation, Ichauway. He did this, he said, not out of strictly humanitarian considerations but for more practical, even economic ends. If this was true, he was the perfect example of Adam Smith’s capitalist gentleman, for whom an invisible hand guides the economy—so long as fellow-feeling and interest in others keeps one in tune with the needs of the community.

Woodruff became involved with Emory by funding his malaria project through the School of Medicine. That relationship began in 1929 and was followed in the next decade by the founding of the Winship Cancer Center, named for Woodruff’s maternal grandfather. In the years since, that seedling has flourished, and Woodruff’s many contributions to Emory have included scores of individual transactions much too long to list.

A glance at the list of Emory’s faculty who hold endowed professorships tells some of the story. In addition to eight Robert W. Woodruff Professors, there is a George Woodruff Professor, a Scarborough Professor funded by Robert, a Phinizy Calhoun, Sr.,  Professor funded by Robert (both of these named for physicians who helped get The Emory Clinic up and running), a Charles T. Winship Professor funded by Robert, a Frances Walters Professor funded by a friend of Robert, a Joseph B. Whitehead Professor funded by a friend of Robert, and two William Patterson Timmie Professors funded by an admirer and friend of Robert.

Sometime in the 1980s, a couple from Palm Beach, Florida, who’d had no previous relationship with Emory, showed up at the gates of the University and said they wanted to see what Robert and George Woodruff had given their money to. A young woman in the Administration Building, Charlotte Johnson—now Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs—gave them a tour of the campus and told them something about the place. The couple went home and rewrote their will, and on their deaths, Mr. and Mrs. Willaford Leach left Emory an unrestricted gift of some $15 million. That gift in 1996 was worth $50 million.

In 1966, thanks largely to Woodruff, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control opened on Clifton Road, next to Emory. The presence of the CDC was one reason why the American Cancer Society moved its headquarters to Atlanta and set up shop across the street. The CDC also made it possible for Emory, in 1990, to launch its first new school in fifty years, the Rollins School of Public Health.

Six buildings on the Emory campus bear the name Woodruff—the Woodruff Memorial Research Building, named for Robert Woodruff’s father, Ernest; the Robert W. Woodruff Library; the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, named for Robert’s wife; the Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center Administration Building; the George W.Woodruff Physical Education Center, named for Robert’s younger brother; and the George and Irene Woodruff Residential Center, named for George and his wife. (A seventh Woodruff building owned by Emory provides office space for medical faculty assigned to Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta and is named for Robert’s youngest brother, Henry.)

Any other philanthropist, having given so much to a university, might justifiably have asked that the institution change its name. That Robert Woodruff did not do so is a testimony both to his sense of humility and to his understanding of the power of tradition in the life of a university. Despite his unparalleled largesse, the University was still more than any one man or family.

Source: Hauk, Gary S., A Legacy of Heart and Mind: Emory Since 1836