Deceased August 29, 2012
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In Memory
Harold L. “Hal” Warner Jr. (aged 100) died peacefully Aug. 29, 2012, on Hilton Head Island, S.C. Hal was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., July 7, 1912, to Harold L. Warner 1910 and Netti Van Deinse.
He met his wife of 72 years, Winifred A. Ingraham (Smith ’34), in kindergarten at the Brooklyn Friends School. They married in 1936 and lived in Northport, N.Y.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Laurel Hollow, N.Y., until her death in January 2007.
Hal began his football, basketball and baseball career at Poly Prep in Brooklyn, all sports that he continued playing at Amherst College. He was captain of the football team as a senior, winning the Howard Hill Mossman Cup given to the member of the senior class who brought the greatest honor in athletics to Amherst College.
He was awarded the John Woodruff Simpson Fellowship in Law for the year 1934-35 at Yale Law School. Hal graduated from Yale Law School in 1937 and in 1939 began a 41-year legal career at Chadbourne & Parke, becoming a partner in 1960. From 1942 until 1958, he served as house counsel to TWA in Kansas City, arguing successfully on their behalf at the U.S. Supreme Court. In New York, he continued representing TWA and also the International Air Transport Association and the Air Transport Association, as well as working on general litigation matters.
In November 2007, he moved to Hilton Head Island. He is survived by his daughter Mary Ann Putnam (Smith ’62) of Hilton Head Island, grandsons Jeffery of Minneapolis, Minn., Christopher of Shorewood, Minn., and Jonathan ’88 of Washington, D.C., plus six great-grandchildren (Ethan, Samuel, Eli, Sydney, Lindsey and Matthew). His son Thomas Seth Warner ’69 predeceased him.
He loved his family, athletics, poetry (Dickinson, Frost, Burns and Shakespeare), telling jokes and reminiscing about his legal cases. A nephew put it best—“Hal was a true Renaissance man.”
Mary Ann Putnam (Hal's daughter)