Deceased January 16, 2020
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In Memory
John passed away on Jan. 16, 2020, in Williamsburg, Va. His wife, Jane, had died in 2004. He leaves sons Michael, David and Robert; their wives, Petra, Paula and Brona; three married grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
John prepared for Amherst at Massena (N.Y.) High School, majored in history, joined Phi Delta Theta and the Outing Club, ran track and was captain of the ski team, for which he ski-jumped. Fraternity brother Mike Johnson ’53 remembers John as one of the regular guys and a steady friend with Nate Dickinson ’53 and Mike.
After Amherst, John earned his D.M.D. at Washington University, and served in the Navy as a line officer for four years and as a dental officer for 17 years. He retired from the Navy as a captain. Then, for 14 years, he was a professor, teaching orthodontics at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, where he must have set a record for popularity, as those 14 years of students voted him Professor of the Year every year.
With Jane, he retired to the four-season Wintergreen Resort south of Charlottesville, Va., a rural place, as he wrote, where there were no traffic lights and where they could enjoy skiing, tennis and golf as well as a variety of indoor activities. He volunteered there on the boards of the performing arts center and rescue squad, and he served as an elder in the Presbyterian Church. John spent his last years in a retirement community in Colonial Williamsburg.
As his family describe John—loving his most treasured companion, Jane, and valuing his time with all his family; enjoying traveling, golfing, skiing and going to the Outer Banks, N.C.; and being “a dignified man who consistently put others before himself”—“he was an irreplaceable part in the lives of those he left.”
George Edmonds ’53