Frank J. Guarini ’46, the former congressman, statesman, and champion of international understanding whose generosity to Dartmouth named the Frank J. Guarini School for Graduate and Advanced Studies and the Frank J. Guarini Institute for International Education, died Saturday, June 20. He was 101 years old.
“Few individuals have had as profound an impact on Dartmouth as Frank Guarini,” says President Sian Leah Beilock. “He believed in the power of education to create ethical leaders and to connect people across borders. These values, which he pushed for throughout his life, now live on at Dartmouth in the institutions he supported.”
Guarini was born and raised in Jersey City, N.J., and matriculated at Dartmouth as the U.S. was entering World War II. He and his classmates were members of the V-12 Navy training program, and the war interrupted his Dartmouth education. “We had to march to class, like a military academy, and they were educating us fast so we could be of some value,” he recalled in a 2014 interview in Occom, a former Dartmouth print newsletter.
He went on to complete midshipman school at Columbia University, then fought in the Pacific, earning the Navy Commendation Medal and three Battle Stars as a navigator aboard the USS Mount McKinley. He returned to Hanover to complete his studies, “anxious to see my old friends and be part of the traditions. You realized how important education is,” he said.
A government major, he credited Dartmouth with helping to shape his moral principles. “My values were set in college, and that is what you are the rest of your life,” he said. “I’m very grateful that it was Dartmouth.”
He earned his JD and LLM from New York University and continued his legal studies at the Hague Academy of International Law. Returning home to Jersey City, he entered public service, first as leader of the Community Charter Council, fighting the city’s then-entrenched corruption, then as a state senator for two terms.
In 1978 he successfully ran for Congress and represented New Jersey’s 14th district for seven terms, sitting on the Ways and Means and Budget committees and joining Congressional trade missions on every continent. In 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed him U.S. representative to the United Nations General Assembly.
Among other roles, Guarini was a president and chairman of the National Italian American Foundation, chair of the board of regents and a trustee of Saint Peter’s University in Jersey City, chair of the board of John Cabot University in Rome, and was active in developing the Jersey City waterfront. In 2008, the main post office in Jersey City was named for him.
Beyond Dartmouth, his philanthropy has named schools and institutes at NYU, John Cabot University, Saint Peter’s University, and the Frank J. Guarini Public Policy Forum at the National Italian American Foundation. Earlier this month, he attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Jersey City’s new courthouse, the Frank J. Guarini Justice Complex.
Jon Kull ’88, dean of the Guarini School, says, “The gift to name the school wasn’t just about money—it was about his commitment to Dartmouth and to supporting graduate students and postdocs and faculty and the research that they do. And that also helps undergraduates, because undergraduates in the sciences work in faculty labs with graduate students and postdocs. So his gift affected all aspects of Dartmouth.”
Kull remembers Guarini as “warm and welcoming, down to earth. I would meet with him in his Jersey City office and he’d order pizza and subs.” At the same time, he was “a natural leader—charismatic, outgoing, and wise. He really personified wisdom and history and honor. Just a remarkable person.”
John Tansey, executive director of the Guarini Institute, met Guarini at a dinner in honor of his philanthropy to Dartmouth. “I found him to be a dynamic, engaging individual who was genuinely curious about each individual and took the time to speak with each person present,” Tansey says.
Tansey says Guarini’s vision for the institute—Dartmouth’s hub for off-campus programs—has “deepened faculty engagement and the integration of cutting-edge research and best practices to meet the evolving needs of students and program participants.”
“If there is one word that best captured Frank Guarini’s values, that word would be ‘service,’” says President Emeritus Philip J. Hanlon ’77, who presented the former congressman with an honorary doctorate at the 2018 Commencement.
“He took great pride in having served our country for so many years as a member of Congress, and more generally, he was committed to supporting those organizations—family, church, schools—that lift up the lives of others,” Hanlon says. “I often wished that every member of the Dartmouth community could meet Frank and be inspired by his heartfelt and authentic commitment to service.”
Hanlon says Guarini was proud of how his gifts “enabled the Guarini School to serve graduate students and postdocs. His support demonstrated to the academic community a new level of seriousness in research and graduate studies on our campus”—an important signal that helped lead to Dartmouth’s election in 2019 to the Association of American Universities, a prominent consortium of leading public and private research universities.
“I will forever be grateful to Frank for his generosity in supporting the College that he loved and for showing us all that leadership is really about service,” Hanlon says.