Deceased July 10, 2020
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In Memory
Eliot died on July 10 following a two-year contest with sarcoma.
In his family memoir, Meet Me Under the Clock at Grand Central (referring to his parents’ first meeting), Eliot wrote that, with his father away in the Army, “From the beginning, I was a hard case,” frequently found fighting in the school hallways and labeled a “problem child” by the principal of his elementary school. Later he spent three years in Heidelberg, Germany, where his father was stationed.
“Amherst sent me a rejection,” Eliot recounts, “but the dean of admissions said it was ‘by mistake.’ I don't think that happens very often.” Eliot kept all his freshman English papers. Comments from his professors were often longer than the paper itself. Eliot concluded, “What they were doing was just what I needed—to be hit over the head by a two-by-four, all the easy assumptions, illusions, fuzzy thinking and sloppy clichéd writing knocked out of me.”
After Amherst, Eliot received a master’s degree in English at the University of Michigan, and then, changing to a law career, he received a J.D. from Columbia University. He worked at an eminent New York law firm and later at the New York State banking department, ultimately being appointed superintendent of banks. Following five years of public service, he became general counsel of Irving Trust Co. and then a senior executive at Bank of Boston, retiring in 2000.
After retirement, Eliot began a research and writing career. He published his family memoir in 2010. His deeply researched and clearly written biography of William McKinley, Ragtime in the White House, was published shortly before his death.
Eliot is survived by his wife, Louisa; two children; two stepsons; and five grandchildren.
Robert M. Riggs ’55 and Louisa Vestner