William “Bill” Crosby Platt, 64, senior writer in Dartmouth’s Office of Communications who collaborated with Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center on a great many stories over the years, died following a long illness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston on Wednesday, September 17, 2025. A Celebration of Bill’s life was held on Tuesday, October 14, at the Wesley United Methodist Church in Concord, N.H.
Everyone at the Rockefeller Center mourns Bill’s passing and sends their deepest condolences to Bill’s family, including his wife Paula, sons Nathaniel and William, brother and sister Donald and Allison, and close cousin Dianne. The Center also extends its condolences to Bill’s many dear colleagues and friends in Dartmouth’s Office of Communications.
Bill’s collaborations with Rocky over the years are legion, totaling about three dozen stories about public policy, politics, and social science. When asked to name their most memorable collaborations with Bill, the Center’s faculty and staff recalled examples exhibiting the breadth and depth of Bill’s impact on the Dartmouth and Upper Valley communities via his writing, including:
- Bill’s generous vision and rare ability to capture regional bipartisan collegiality even in a polarized era;
- Bill’s deep observation of the granular connections between Dartmouth alumni, students, faculty, and staff during a public policy training Fellowship in Washington, D.C.;
- An expansive documentation of the Center’s 40th anniversary;
- Bill’s expert skill at distilling what one faculty member characterized as their own “long, rambling” answers into a portrait of Dartmouth at its best, via a collaboration between alumni judges and current students (“so, if you were to put that in one sentence…,” Bill kindly nudged the faculty member);
- Sharing the depth of Dartmouth’s public policy and social science research collaborations between faculty, students, and state legislators, whether in state capitols during normal times or on zoom during the pandemic;
- Exhibiting Dartmouth’s ability to bring the nation’s leading policy discussions to Hanover in his coverage of high profile speaker series.
Bill’s friends at the Center recalled how “his coverage of the programming and people involved was truly inspiring,” and that his embeddedness in the community “shined through in all of his writing.” Beyond these formal collaborations, Center faculty and staff recalled how fun it always was to talk about politics, policy, and history with Bill, whether at a program he was covering in his official capacity, an informal lunch featuring a guest Bill found particularly interesting (a 2022 lunch with Bobby Seale stands out), or in a conversation over a cup of coffee around campus that could range from contemporary politics to book and movie recommendations that added essential historical context and dimensionality to current affairs.
Faculty and staff at the Rockefeller Center are grateful to have known, worked with, and befriended Bill, and will miss him dearly and remember him fondly.
Read more about Bill’s dedication to work and family in The Dartmouth article.