The Pembroke College Foundation is very sad to report the death of Damon Wells, CBE, ’61,  An Honorary Fellow of Pembroke, Damon died in Houston, his hometown.  He was 84.

Official obituary and funeral details can be found here 

A philanthropist, businessman, and award-winning biographer of Stephen Douglas, Damon was one of the most significant benefactors to the College in its history.  He was also a strong supporter of the Pembroke College Foundation, particularly in its early years, working closely with Sir Roger Bannister to help create it; he remained an important advisor to the PCFNA for many years.

Among his numerous civic involvements, Damon served on the Board directors the Child Guidance Center of Houston, The Kinkaid School of Houston (his alma mater), Camp Allen retreat of Episcopalian Diocese of Texas, and the Winston Churchill Foundation.  He was a national director of the English-Speaking Union and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations.

Damon received his BA from Yale in 1958 and came up to Pembroke in 1961 to read Modern History.  A fifth generation Texan, Damon had already taken over the management of his family’s banking and real estate business at the age of 21 when his father died just weeks after he graduated from Yale.  He received a second bachelor’s degree from Oxford in 1964 and an MA in 1968. Damon went on to earn a PhD in history from Rice University.

While maintaining his interest in history and academia, Damon gradually expanded his family holdings in both the U.S. and internationally.  He also turned increasingly to philanthropy, particularly the strengthening of Anglo-American relations.  He endowed the Wells Lecture Program at his old school Kinkaid, bringing prominent British speakers to address their students.  Damon also contributed to the construction of St Martin’s Episcopalian Church in Houston.

He established the Damon Wells Fellowship at Kinkaid which annually brings to the school distinguished speakers, one of whom was Barbara Jordan, the civil rights leader who was the first African-American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first Southern African-American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

A great admirer of Winston Churchill, Damon worked to create the Churchill Museum in London, was a board member of the Winston Churchill Foundation and was a trustee of the Churchill Grave Trust.  In 1991 Damon was made an Honorary CBE by Queen Elizabeth II, an award in which he took great pride.

Pembroke has been the fortunate recipient of Damon’s generosity over many decades; his impact has been extraordinary.  He endowed a Fellowship in Modern History as well as providing a Fellows’ Travel Fund for our senior academics to visit the United States.  He endowed the Chaplaincy at Pembroke and provided funding for the restoration of the Chapel in the 1970s and again in the 1990s.  He gave generously again for the construction of Pembroke’s new quad, acting as a patron for the Bridging Centuries.  Subsequently he arranged an endowed fund to support chapel music, organ maintenance, choral scholars and the choir through future years.

A shy, intellectual, and modest man, Damon never sought public attention.  In 1997, following the chapel’s restoration, it was named in his honor at a special ceremony conducted by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Runcie.  In 2013, on the very morning of the opening of the new quad Damon quietly pledged the final amount to bring the associated fundraising campaign to its target.  Having already given generously to that campaign he was pleased that then-Master Giles Henderson was honored with a named building rather than himself.

Damon always maintained an active interest in the College, even in the last few years when he was unable to visit in person.  His name will live on in Oxford, not only in the College he loved but on the University’s Clarendon Arch where his name is inscribed alongside those greatest benefactors in the history of our University, such as John Radcliffe and Queen Elizabeth I.

Clarendon Arch
Copyright: © John Cairns Photography / Oxford University