Th e Crimmins Fund

You touched us all with your enthusiasm, warmth, gregarious energy. Our enduring time at Portsmouth was something akin the bleak Middle Ages: dark, constrained, a prelude to greater things, a time of hope and expectation for future happiness and relevance. You represented the bright future we sought: an exotic figure who knew happiness and achievement. Someone who had produced a movie shown at the Cannes Film Festival, who drove Camaros, who eschewed ties, who tousled with his towheaded children!

You may but have departed from the School, you have not left our collective memory of a person much loved. You represent the epitome of a Portsmouth graduate of highest integrity: compassionate, generous, tolerant, learned. Bless you, –Gregory Hornig ’68

Even the most naive third formers, and I was certainly one of those, knew within days of our arrival that there was a gruff, warm-hearted angel floating around the campus who was always at the ready to lift up the downhearted, advise the confused, cheer on the enthusiasts and teach the uninitiated the glories and troubles of the ancient and medieval worlds. Bill Crimmins was at once thoroughly modern in his tastes in art and his commitment to social and racial justice, and man who resisted the corrosive acids of contemporary life

CRIMMINS FUND

SUCCESSFULLY ESTABLISHED

On September 18, 2021, Acting Headmaster Matthew Walter announced the establishment of the William A. Crimmins ’48 Scholarship Fund for Arts, Athletics and Civilization in honor of one of Portsmouth’s most beloved teachers and coaches, and the last living link to the School’s founder, Dom Hugh Diman.

Speaking to an overflow crowd in the hospitality tent above the Varsity football field just prior to the scrimmage against St. George’s, Mr. Walter said, “This Scholarship Fund has been established to honor Bill for his many contributions to Portsmouth as a student, teacher, coach, parent and benefactor.”

Skirling bagpipes and several standing ovations from adoring former students greeted the announcement.“Uncle Billy” Crimmins, now 93, was on hand with members of his family to enjoy the proceedings, which included a video created by Peter Tovar ’72 showing Bill and key colleagues at various stages of his Portsmouth career–scholar, teacher, coach, mentor and friend.

The new scholarship fund has already raised more than $500,000 towards its $1 million goal.Those interested in learning more about, or contributing to the William A. Crimmins ’48 Scholarship Fund are encouraged to contact Interim Director of Advancement Patty Gibbons (pgibbons@portsmouthabbey.org) or Acting Headmaster Matt Walter (mwalter@portsmouthabbey. org) for complete details.

At Clark Cooke House, the table is set to celebrate the lifelong contributions of Bill Crimmins’48.

Bill Crimmins’48 enjoys the beauty of harp songs, which harken back to his Irish history.

Guests celebrate the life and contribution of Bill Crimmins’48 to Portsmouth Abbey School. in his reverence for tradition and the past. He was a gentleman in a world skeptical of the very concept. But you could never mistake his old-fashioned virtues for any sort of crankiness about the changes he lived through — and the change he thought our country needed to make to be worthy of its calling to justice and equality.

He lived his creed without ever calling attention to his many acts of generosity and kindness. In this and in so many other ways, he was a Christian who paid heed to the call to act rightly while heeding Jesus’s warnings against doing so to puff oneself up or win the acclaim of others. So many of his good deeds, personal and philanthropic, were done privately with an eye toward intentionally concealing the man and the force behind the works he undertook.

We knew him as Uncle Billy, and that very fact explains why he might think my words are too pious. He hates pretension. He simply loves life and wants to invite everyone to enjoy its possibilities. He wants those around him to have room to think and to laugh, to excel and to look out for others, to expand their minds and nurture their hearts. Yes, he was a teacher all the way down, to young students at Portsmouth but also to his community and, well, to everyone he encountered. –E.J. Dionne ’69