Ex-Boys’ Club head W. Hutchinson dies
SLIDESHOW: Watch a tribute to the late W.R. "Hutch" Hutchinson, actor, director and Richmond Boys Club leaderTo Richmond theater circles, deep-voiced William Robert "Hutch" Hutchinson was an actor who compelled you to recall his characters years after he played them.
To thousands of boys he mentored during more than three decades, he was Mr. Boys' Club of Richmond.
To thousands of Richmonders, he was the founder in 1975 and co-director of the annual International Food Festival, the former "Delicious Weekend" that brought dozens of ethnicities together through food and entertainment and raised money for Boys' Club projects.
An Irish wake for Mr. Hutchinson, who died Thursday in a Henrico County hospice at age 77, was held Friday night at the Richmond home of his daughter Diane Ratcliffe.
His funeral will be private, and, in lieu of flowers, the family asks mourners to "make a child smile."
The Brooklyn, N.Y., native's acting and Boys' Club careers traveled parallel tracks after he entered a Boys' Club training program at New York University during the 1940s. At the time, he was acting in what now would be considered off-off-Broadway productions.
He came here in 1960 to serve as executive director of the Boys' Club of Richmond. "He said he never had a 'bad boy.' There were just boys that needed to be reached, and he was very good at figuring out what they needed," his daughter said.
He spearheaded the capital campaign to build the first true Boys' Club building, at Robinson Street and Kensington Avenue.
In 1961 he made his Richmond stage debut and carefully chose his scripts. His noted roles included those of Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," whom he played in 1980 at the now-gone Haymarket Dinner Theatre, and Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" in 1993 at Barksdale Theatre. That was his last major acting effort.
In 1995, three years after retiring from the Boys' Club, he founded the award-winning Experiential Theatre in the club basement. After a short run, the group folded, but Mr. Hutchinson continued to rent the venue, dubbed The Empty Space, to other experimental groups for several years.
His wife of 44 years and partner in the food festival, Gloria Agresti Hutchinson, died in 1995.
In addition to his daughter, survivors include three sisters, Barbara Doran of Virginia Beach, Helene Herrman of Acworth, Ga., and Peggy Root of Portland, Ore.; and three grandchildren.
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Reader Reactions
Hutch was one of the truly great men of Richmond theatre. The Experiential Theatre, which he founded and where he worked as Artistic Director, was a huge force in the arts in Richmond in the 1970s (not the 1990s, as mentioned in the T-D). Hutch’s work, talent and artistic integrity challenged and inspired all of us who worked in theatre at that time. He was very influential and contempory, whether he was working on a new experimental script or a classic. He was also very supportive and giving with regard to the theatre community at large. He demanded only the best from himself and from others. He is irreplacable, and will be sorely missed.
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