Deceased February 9, 2013

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50th Reunion Book Entry


In Memory

Marriages are made in heaven, ’tis said, and George Slocum would swear by that.  And bow to Lady Luck, too, because, like the guy in the pop standard, he found his million-dollar-baby in a 5-and10-cent store.

It was a wartime Christmas leave and, resplendent in his ensign’s uniform, George was gift-shopping at Altman’s (okay, not exactly Woolworth’s, forgive the poetic license). He wanted flannel pajamas to shield his mother from the chill of fuel rationing.  When a saleslady “strolled over to wait on me, I thought the room got a little brighter and, when she spoke, I knew I had met my dream girl,” George said in a memoir.

A whirlwind courtship followed and, in April 1944, he and Sally Graham married and lived happily ever afterward, a fairy tale existence that charmed everybody. A niece, Ruth Geer of Montpelier, Vt.,  said they decided not to have children “because they were having so much fun together.”

George died Feb. 9, 2013, aged 94, at his longtime home in Ossining, N. Y., five years after Sally, who lived to 99. Both were “sharp as tacks until the end,” his niece said.         

Born in Dobbs Ferry, N. Y., George majored in economics and political science at Amherst and got a Yale law degree. With the war, Annapolis commissioned him as a naval engineer assigned to a destroyer.

Long a corporate lawyer in Westchester County, he was also extolled by a friend, Alice Laurenson,  for a post-retirement career as the founder and head of an AARP program helping seniors in Westchester County with income tax returns.

He also pursued a longtime interest in electronics with study at RCA Institute. With the flowering of the computer age, George became an invaluable techie among relatives and friends.

George Bria '38

50th Reunion

My life has been for the most part a normal mid-century
American life marked by three events which
are abnormal in today's world.
1. I have enjoyed a single marriage to the same
marvelous girl for forty-four years.
2. For my entire business career I was associated
with the same firm.
3. I have lived continuously in the same house
for thirty-four years.

       Let's get more chronological. Upon graduation
from high school in the small village of Ardsley, New York, I chose Amherst over the other two schools to which I had been admitted for reasons which I can't remember. I never regretted the choice, so maybe the reasons were valid. After graduation from The Fairest College, I went on to Yale Law School from which I graduated in 1941,just before all hell broke loose in the Pacific.
       Right after Pearl Harbor, I enlisted in the V-7  Naval Reserve program after a very short period of practice with the New York law firm of Bleakley,Platt and Walker. I was assigned to engineering duty when the Navy found that my best performance in college was in the math and science courses, and the Navy needed engineers, not lawyers. After a 120 day stint at Annapolis with thermodynamics and a slide rule, I was off to the briney deep as engineering officer on a destroyer for the duration. Without doubt the best thing that happened as a result of my naval career was that with the ample aid of blue dress blue uniform, I was able to meet, court and wed my lifelong mate, Sally.
       Upon separation from the Service, I resumed practice with my previous firm, specializing in corporate and tax law far the balance of my working life.
       After an early retirement, I decided to satisfy a longlasting curiosity in things electrical by enrolling in an electronics course at RCA Institutes.This provided a basis for an absorbing hobby in the retirement years. On a more serious level, I organized and administered for several years the Westchester County Tax-Aide program for AARP, which in cooperation with the IRS, assists the elderly in the preparation of their income tax returns.
       Upon entering the threescore and ten mark, I appreciate more than ever the wide range of interests provided by the education at Terras Irradient. French and am particularly interested in the modern Latin American writers such as Vargas Llhosa, Garcia Marquez and the French writers Marguerite Yourcenar and Julien Grac.
      Recent readings which I heartily recommend are: The War of the End of the World by Vargas Llhosa, Oriental Tales by Marguerite Yourcenar, the Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes and Story of a Murder Foretold by Garcia Marquez. I get a lot of fun reading about places I've been. I just finished The Spy Ware Red, (story of a beautiful gir1 spy in World War II Spain) Patriots Sins (the CIA and controlled banks involved in the international drug and money laundering business).
     Bette and I live in a beautiful condominium development in the north of Milwaukee where we are within two minutes drive from her three married children and nine grandchildren and my son Keith. My daughter, Linda, and her family live an Cape Cod, and we expect to visit them at reunion next June. I continue to be active in my industrial and commercial real estate business, but we find time for one or two foreign trips each year. We're looking forward to seeing everyone at reunion.