On July 9, 2013, the Class of ’63 lost Paul Harry Flint Jr. to an undiagnosed case of lung cancer. Paul reluctantly entered Amherst in 1959. Having graduated from Medford High at the age of 16, he’d planned to spend a year touring around Europe before entering college, but his parents, Emily Flint, the first female editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and Paul Harry Flint Sr., dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, would hear none of it—they packed him off to Amherst.
“Stuck at Amherst,” Paul spent the next four years drinking beer, smoking Pall Malls and playing cards at Chi Phi while doing just enough to maintain his status as a history major. Well, almost enough. Terry Segal ’64, another Chi Phi, likes to tell the following story.
About a month before graduation, Paul was sitting in the house playing cards when word came that Dean Porter wanted to see him immediately. After finishing the hand, Paul laid down his cards and left for Johnson Chapel. He was back in 15 minutes. “What happened?” all the brothers wanted to know. Sitting back in his chair, Paul picked up his cards and said, “I’ve been cut from the traveling team. So, whose deal is it?”
Before the week was out, Paul had enlisted in the Navy. From the Navy, Paul went to the business school at UVA, then into publishing, then into real estate, then to law school, then to the GSA— where he met and married Susan Lind, the best thing that ever happened to him—then to The Nature Conservancy during which time he wrote seven books with me. I can attest that Paul had one of the funniest, most interesting, unpretentious, free-thinking minds we’d ever hope to meet, and that he left us too soon. But as he’d probably put it, “Look at the bright side. I made the traveling team.”
Dave Morine ’66