Deceased January 8, 2020
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In Memory
Sandy grew up in Central New Jersey and attended Rutgers Prep, where his father was headmaster. He and I (and Paul Machemer ’69 and John Marks ’69) spent our first three years at Amherst living in Morrow, Valentine and Psi U and eating in West. Sandy was Archon (president) of Psi U for a semester our senior year. During our last three years, Sandy and I drove to and from New Jersey on vacation breaks, singing along with Top 40 AM radio tunes.
Sandy was a top student and a wonderful friend. He graduated magna cum laude, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and particularly excelled in foreign languages—it was hard to grasp that his “entry-level” foreign language course as a freshman was French 49. He pursued Chinese and Japanese courses offered through the Four-College program.
The Sandy we knew in college was transformed by his two years in Japan as a Doshisha Fellow. Afterwards, he returned to New Jersey and spent the rest of his life pursuing his interests in martial arts, calligraphy (in multiple East Asian languages), Japanese, poetry and self-realization. His 2019 poem, A Man of Seventy Years Practices His Martial Arts, catalogs the many things “a man of 70 remembers” after noting at the start: “The man is no longer 25 years old.” Perhaps he spoke for us all.
Although he visited Amherst from time to time, Sandy chose not to return for our 50th—perhaps because he knew that the Sandy we had known in the late ’60s no longer existed. But he still stayed in touch, and still called me Bobby, so, somewhere inside, the essence of our old friend remained.
Bob Dwyer ’69