Deceased April 20, 2019
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In Memory
Dick passed away on April 20, 2019, at the age of 85 after a short illness. He lived in Amagansett, N.Y., on the eastern tip of Long island, and enjoyed gardening, landscape and still-life painting, his three terriers and volunteer activities including driving for Meals on Wheels and supporting liberal political causes. He did not have a partner. In his later years, he spent much time with his sister, Ann Dunn, and her husband.
Dick graduated magna cum laude. After getting a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton, he crafted a distinguished career as vice president and director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. He was a pioneer in the field of econometrics, and he published numerous articles in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Quarterly Review.
Dick was part of a freshman group that was housed in South, apart from the rest of the class. We bonded over common intellectual interests and an identity as outsiders, and most of us went on to join the Lord Jeff Club and work toward the abolition of the fraternity system.
Dick was a person of integrity and sincerity who was not entirely comfortable in social situations. Childhood mumps left him deaf in an era before modern hearing aid technology. He was the reincarnation of an 18th-century English gentleman. He loved Samuel Johnson and named one of his terriers Boswell. His ambition was to write a biography of Franz Joseph Haydn. In my mind’s eye I remember his determination to master one of Bach’s inventions on the Jeff Club piano. In my last contact with him, around the time of his retirement, I asked how his deafness influenced his appreciation of music. He responded that he didn’t need to listen to music anymore, he could play it all in his head.
Michael Robbins ’55