Community members and Williams College officials were among those shocked and saddened by the suicide Monday of Harry C. "Hank" Payne, the college's 14th president, who had spent the last seven years as president of Woodward Academy in College Park, Ga.
Payne, 60, wrote a suicide note before leaping to his death from the eighth floor of a Courtyard Marriott hotel room, according to an article published yesterday morning in Georgia's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which reported that authorities would not disclose the letter's contents.

By yesterday afternoon, dozens of people had written notes to Payne's family by signing an Internet guest book hosted by the newspaper's Web site, www.ajc.com, and by posting to the Williams College alumni blog, www.EphBlog.com.

Few had answers or even speculation about why Payne would have taken his own life.