Deceased October 31, 2021
View alumni profile (log in required)
In Memory
Our freshman year Amherst classmate, Francis Eric Knight Britton (known then as Frank and later as Eric), died in Paris on October 31, 2021. His funeral service was held at Saint Ouen Cemetery, with a memorial remembrance at the café Brasserie Les Facultés.
Eric’s life story is fascinating but difficult to reconstruct. I may be the only classmate in recent decades actually to sit down in person and talk at length with Eric. That occurred in Lyon, France, on August 3, 2017—a meeting made possible by a dialogue Eric struck up on Facebook which incorporated his emails to Amherst where he commented on administration policies and where those were leading.
On his Facebook page, Eric noted his graduation from Williston Academy, his major in economics and public policy at Columbia University and his “core curriculum studies” at Amherst. Thereafter he served in the U.S. Army, taught at Mills College, taught economics at NYU and became an advisor for USAID. He also was a staff consultant at the United Nations, a research fellow at the Ford Foundation, a senior consultant to the OCED and a founder of ECOPLAN, which Eric’s friends describe as a successful and prosperous worldwide consultancy whose heyday was in the ’80s, ’90s, and 2000’s.
In our 50th Reunion book, Eric wrote that his “1993 report for the European Commission, ‘Rethinking Work: New Ways to Work in an Information Society,’ was a widely read and cited ‘thinking exercise’ for managers and policy makers. Communications, ‘distance work’ and aggressive use of the Internet are important components of my work practices.” His “World Streets” consultancy had worldwide clients. Eric’s Parisian friend Alon Rozen says that until his death, “he was still consulting for cities like Penang, Malaysia, on ‘mobility without individually owned cars.’” He was, in short, a visionary ahead of his times.
Dick Hubert ’60