Lebanon
These days, a reference to “Norris Cotton” more likely alludes to the cancer center than the Republican senator who represented New Hampshire for more than two decades.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock officials have said people soon may have to get used to calling the institution by a different name. Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine — which, together with D-H, supports the cancer center — has made it clear that if a benefactor comes along and donates a sufficient sum, the Norris Cotton Cancer Center may recognize the gift by renaming itself.
How much money that will require and how people refer to the cancer center have yet to be determined.
The possibility that the cancer center will get a new name comes as a result of Dartmouth College’s $3 billion capital campaign, which officially launched in April.
Geisel’s portion of the campaign, titled “Interaction,” seeks a total of $250 million for the medical school, including $100 million for the cancer center, according to the school’s website.
In outlining how the medical school plans to deploy the $100 million it hopes to raise, the website notes that “Geisel seeks a transformative naming gift for the Cancer Center, as well as targeted philanthropic investments … .”
“With new philanthropic support and with patients as our partners, we will leverage this hotbed of innovation and collaboration to spur advances in the discovery and delivery of cancer care and prevention as no other institution can,” the website states.
Cotton was a Lebanon resident who served in the U.S. Senate from 1954 to 1975, and helped secure a $3 million federal grant in 1970 — roughly $20 million in today’s dollars — to build what was rural New England’s first regional cancer center, according to a history of the cancer center available on its website.
The center first opened its doors in 1972.
Dartmouth spokeswoman Diana Lawrence said by email the college “cannot speculate on how much that gift might be or from where it might come.”
If such a gift should arrive, “we will find an appropriate way to continue to honor Senator Cotton for his support of cancer research and treatment,” Lawrence said in her email. “The Cotton family is aware and supportive of the campaign goals.”
Cotton had no children from his first marriage to Ruth, who died in 1978, after 51 years of marriage, according to his obituary in The New York Times. His second wife, Eleanor Coolidge Brown, had children from a previous marriage.
The college has been in touch with extended family members, Lawrence said.
Hilda Walton, Cotton’s stepdaughter from his second marriage who lives in Maine, had no comment when reached by phone on Tuesday.
The online history of the cancer center also credits Cotton, who died in 1989, with helping to return the medical school to full-degree-granting status in 1971. The school previously provided two years of academic training before students transferred to another institution to finish their clinical training and obtain their degrees.
Dartmouth College awarded Cotton an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1985, according to the online history. Then-Dartmouth President David McLaughlin offered a tribute to Cotton at the time:
“The Norris Cotton Cancer Center … exists as a manifestation, among many others, of the high regard in which you are held by those with whom you were associated in Washington. Perhaps even of greater significance, however, the countless men, women, and children whose lives have been, and will be, extended by the work of that unique resource facility constitute a further, ongoing tribute to you and your worthy achievements.”
Cotton himself described the cancer center as “the apple of my eye,” according to the history. He said it was one of the accomplishments of which he was most proud.
“Though you don’t brag about what you drag home for your district, this is the single greatest satisfaction of all my 26 years in Congress,” he said, according to the history.
Dr. O. Ross McIntyre, who served as the center’s director from 1974 to 1992, said that though Cotton’s assistance helped get the center up and running, the name didn’t attract donors.
“I must say that most of his friends were politicians and most politicians are out there grubbing for money rather than giving money,” McIntyre said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “That name did not generate a whole lot of resources for the cancer center.”
McIntyre noted that the building in which the cancer center is now housed is called the Barbara E. Rubin Building, named for a late patient of the center and an official of the Amicus Foundation.
In 1995, the cancer center moved from Hanover into the $25 million building, which sits adjacent to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, according to the September 1995 edition of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.
McIntyre said he wasn’t surprised to hear that the cancer center’s current leaders are looking at a name change.
He pointed to recent large donations to other schools that include name changes.
For example, the University of Michigan recently renamed its cancer center in honor of Richard and Susan Rogel, who have committed to donate $150 million for cancer research.
“I hope they do have somebody on the hook for $50 million or something like that,” McIntyre said. “That’s what they really need.”
Areas where the cancer center aims to focus investment include expanding collaborations, accelerating the development of new therapies and devices, giving faculty the freedom to explore higher risk research and expanding learning opportunities to Dartmouth students at all levels, according to the campaign’s website.
But Karen Cervantes, a Lebanon Republican who has party roles at the state and county levels, said she would be disappointed to see Cotton’s name removed from the cancer center.
“With everything that he did for the state and the community I just think it would be an absolute insult to go and have somebody buy a name,” Cervantes said in a phone interview on Wednesday.
People in the community knew Cotton, who is buried in the School Street Cemetery, Cervantes said. But maybe the name means less to people who have moved to town since he died, she said.
“They named that Norris Cotton. … You just don’t arbitrarily throw that out to whoever has the most money,” she said.
A renaming of the cancer center would not be the first such change at Dartmouth in recent history. The college changed the name of its medical school from Dartmouth Medical School to The Audrey and Theodor Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in 2012, following a donation in an undisclosed amount from the Geisel family. Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, was a 1925 Dartmouth graduate. He died in 1991. Audrey Geisel survives him.
Though the amount remains undisclosed, a release from Dartmouth at the time said, “Their generosity to Dartmouth during their lifetimes and through their estate plan renders the Geisel family the most significant philanthropist to Dartmouth in its history.”
That announcement came just months before the college opened the Black Family Visual Arts Center that was financed with a $48 million gift from Leon Black, a billionaire investor who at that time sat on the college’s board of trustees.
There are two primary things for an organization to consider when contemplating a name change, said Alan Cantor, a Concord-based nonprofit consultant.
The amount of the donation should be worth any difficulties entailed with the name change and there should be a policy in place outlining what to do in the event that the person for whom the name change is made turns out to be an embarrassment, he said.
Naming a building for someone because they make a large gift may make people wonder, “Why this person?” Cantor said.
But, he said, “I have confidence that Dartmouth has thought this through.”
While naming buildings in honor of large donors is nothing new, the size of such donations is, Cantor said.
“There are a lot more zeros attached — a lot more zeros and commas,” he said.
This trend in size is an indication of a larger societal shift, he said.
“I think there should be a recognition that the wealth inequality is putting more of a premium on these supersized gifts,” he said. “There’s always been the haves and have nots, but the haves now have much more.”
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
