Richard V. C. Watkins, Class of 1911

Richard Vivian Curnow Watkins was born July 31, 1888 in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania to Matthew K. and Jennie Curnow Watkins. As a child, he lived at the family’s home at 102 North Hickory Street. He attended Conway Hall, Dickinson College's preparatory school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and entered the College proper in 1908 and pursued Special Studies. His brother, M. K. Watkins, was already a student at the College and graduated in 1909. At Dickinson, Watkins became a member of Phi Kappa Sigma, but during his junior year, he was forced to withdraw from school due to his failing health.

After withdrawing, he moved to Brown’s Mills, New Jersey, and later to Burlington. Despite leaving school, however, he maintained a friendship with Professor Wilber H. Norcross, head of the psychology department at the College who had been at College with him in the class of 1907 and a fellow member of Phi Kappa Sigma. On September 12, 1927, at the age of thirty-nine, Watkins died of a lingering illness in his home in Burlington. In 1929, the Richard V. C. Watkins Chair of Psychology was established with $50,000 left to the College in Watkins’ estate. Later that year, his friend Norcross became the first professor to hold the new position.