Charles Collis '37 can't help but chuckle when he hears students casually suggest to each other, "Let's do Collis for lunch."
When Collis himself was a student at the College some 60 years ago, he never dreamed his name would ever become such a permanent part of the Dartmouth vernacular.
"I guess I'm lucky that my last name is just two syllables -- makes it easier to say," Collis said during an interview at the Hanover Inn. "Imagine if my name was really long with a lot of syllables."
Collis, who was in Hanover this weekend for his 60th reunion, has been funding programs at the College for nearly 20 years -- including the Charles A. Collis professorship of History. This professorship is a yearly sponsorship of 12 Collis-endowed scholars and the creation of the Collis Center in 1979.
"We really enjoy the wonderful, heartwarming letters we receive each year from Collis scholars students, telling us their ambitions and goals," his wife Ellen Collis told The Dartmouth in 1994. "We have kept all the letters. We have a whole album."
In February 1992, Collis and his wife donated $5.5 million to the College to renovate the Collis Center to meet the increasing social needs of the Dartmouth community. The new additions included the game rooms and the Lone Pine Tavern.
"I really wish there would have been some sort of student center while I was here," Collis said. "We never had anything like that."
Regardless, Collis said the four years he spent at Dartmouth were some of the most enjoyable of his life. He said this is the reason for his continuing generosity to the College.
"I'm very much in love with and grateful to Dartmouth for what it has given me," Collis said. "It only feels appropriate that I give something back. I owe Dartmouth at least that much."
Collis came from a family that valued education.
"My parents always pushed me to go to college, especially since they both weren't able to go," he said.
His decision to apply to Dartmouth was influenced by counselors at a New Hampshire camp he went to during the summer in his early teen years.
"All of them were my heroes," Collis said. "Since all the counselors were college students, I thought I would become like them if I went to college too."
At Dartmouth, he was a brother at Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity, now known as Phi Tau, and an active member of the Dartmouth Outing Club. An economics major, Collis said he was academically "unremarkable."
"College life should be more than by the books, if you catch my drift," Collis said. "The scholastic aspect of college is important, but so is everything else."
Collis graduated from Dartmouth in 1937 during the height of the Great Depression.
"There were no jobs then," Collis said. "I really had to go out and start my own."
He went back to his hometown of Taunton, Mass., where he began his own business, the College Athletic Shoe Co.
Collis later made his millions in the 1960s, when he founded Princess House, a nationwide company specializing in giftware, tableware and decorator accessories.
He retired in 1978, and has since been donating portions of his fortune to Dartmouth and to charity organizations. He attributed his success to "luck and tenacity."
"If I were to look back on my life and share what I've learned, I would tell people never to be afraid to take chances, but always keep working at everything you do," Collis said. "Life is about risk, but without tenacity, you can't make it."
Collis praised the recent changes to the Collis Center -- a project that includes late-night food service and a new mini movie theater.
"Dartmouth life is increasingly becoming a balance between the academic and the social, and that's the way it should be," Collis said.
