MICHAEL S. PALMER, M.D., a physician and best-selling novelist who helped popularize the genre of medical thrillers, died Oct. 29, 2013. He was 71. A member of Beta Theta Pi, he received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University and served in the U.S. Public Health Service. He served as a clinical instructor in medicine at Tufts University and was on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine. At the time of his death he was an associate director emeritus of Physician Health Services. His debut book, The Sisterhood, sold millions of copies worldwide and is still in print today. He wrote 19 more New York Times best-selling novels that have been translated in 35 foreign countries. Extreme Measures, his fourth novel, was made into a movie in 1996. He was an accomplished bridge player, adventurous traveler, and a musician. Survivors include his companion, Robin Broady; three children, including Matthew A. Palmer ’88; four grandchildren; and two sisters.

JOHN A. REEDER JR., 71, an attorney who was chief counsel for British Petroleum Alaska for 22 years, died July 23, 2013. He was a member of Delta Tau Delta and received his law degree from Southern Methodist University. After serving in the Peace Corps for two years and working as house counsel for a small energy startup in Dallas, he moved to Alaska, where he spent three years as the chief attorney in the Anchorage branch of the Attorney General’s office. He then joined BP, where his work spanned most of the major issues the industry has faced, including the development of the Prudhoe Bay oil field and the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. After leaving BP, he served several more years as an independent oil and gas consultant. His wife, Loisann Lindemood Reeder, survives.

JAMES M. MATTSON, a real estate appraiser, died July 23, 2013, at age 72. He was a member of Kappa Nu Kappa and served in the U.S. Coast Guard. His career in real estate spanned more than 40 years. Survivors include three children, three grandchildren, two sisters, and a large extended family.

F. PARKER BARTLETT III, a banker and real estate agent, died Aug. 6, 2013. He was 74. A member of Alpha Delta Phi, he served with U.S. Army Intelligence. As vice president of Chemical Bank, he opened their first branch in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, later moving to Maine, where he became a real estate agent and was active in the Lincoln Arts Festival. He is survived by his wife, Frances Matko Bartlett, two children, and a large extended family.

JOHN A.H. BRISCOE, 76, the former director of development for the National Council of Churches and for Common Cause, died Dec. 8, 2013. A member of Eclectic, he received his degree with honors and with distinction in history. He received a master’s degree from Harvard University and also studied at MIT. During his career in public service, he was a Peace Corps volunteer, a teacher in Kenya, assistant to the president of Bryn Mawr College, and political candidate. He launched PennServe, a public service initiative in Pennsylvania, and he was also active in environmental causes. His wife, Kate Williams, survives, as do four children, four grandchildren, and his brother.

BENJAMIN D. DAY, who retired as a physicist after a long career at Argonne National Laboratory, died July 13, 2013, at age 76. He received his degree with high honors and with distinction in physics, and he was a member of Beta Theta Pi. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa and to Sigma Xi, he received his PhD from Cornell University. After two years of postdoctoral research at UCLA, he joined Argonne, where he was a senior physicist in the Department of Low Energy Theoretical Nuclear Physics. During his career he was an invited scholar at MIT, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Niels Bohr Institute. He later worked with Lucent Technologies (Bell Laboratories). His wife, Holliday Trentman Day, survives, as do two daughters, two grandchildren and his sister.

The Rev. GARY B. RUNDLE, 78, who became an employment specialist after serving several Episcopalian parishes, died Sept. 10, 2013. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon and received his master’s degree in divinity from the Virginia Seminary after serving in the U.S. Army. Predeceased by his stepdaughter, he is survived by his wife, Carol Richenburg Rundle, two children, three stepsons, four grandchildren, two sisters, and many nieces and nephews.

LEON M. ALWARD, 80, who retired as an international marketing manager with Advanced Micro Devices, died Apr. 24, 2013. A member of Gamma Psi, he received his degree with honors and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He served in the U.S. Army. Survivors include two nieces and many friends worldwide.

WILLIAM M. CLAYBAUGH, a retired stockbroker, died Nov. 24, 2013. He was 82. A member of Psi Upsilon, he served in the U.S. Navy. Among those who survive are his wife, Jane Simmons Claybaugh, four children, 11 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and a nephew, Richard S. Wortley ’76.

STUART GOLDSMITH, 82, a corporate executive and international businessman, died July 23, 2013. A member of Alpha Delta Phi, he received his degree with honors and with high distinction in history and literature. After serving in U.S. Navy Intelligence, he received an MBA from Harvard Business School and began his career in international business. His wife, Ann Crombie, predeceased him.

 

Richard “Dixie” Sanger ’52 offers these reflections on his friend:

I have the sad duty of reporting the death of Stuart Goldsmith on July 23, 2013, at his home in Bellport, NY.

Chip had been in declining health for years, but as recently as last March, when Maggie and I visited him at his winter home in Florida, had seemed to have staged another of his remarkable recoveries. We had a lovely time dining with him and, of course wining with him (although you will be glad to know I abstained) and enjoyed the company of a couple of his lady friends, being careful never to acknowledge the existence of the one in the presence of the other.

Chip was in good spirits, moving around without too much discomfort, and still driving, although not well. (Nothing new in that; he was always a better guide than driver.) Shortly after returning to Long Island for the summer, however, he fell ill again. From a distance, our best diagnosis is that his much-repaired heart finally gave out; this time there were no more medical miracles to performed. Chip had enjoyed nearly 25 years of borrowed time; his first heart attack, which hit as he was hustling to board a plane at what was then Washington  National Airport, would have killed him had it not taken place with skilled help (and a defibrillator) right at hand.

Last Friday he was taken off all life-support devices save an oxygen inhalator, and sent home from Stony Brook Medical Center. The doctors told him he might live two more hours, or two more weeks. He called a few friends, including Maggie and me, to say goodbye. I was able to tell him I loved him and that I would pray for him, whether he liked it or not.

As you may know, Chip had little use for organized religion; he acknowledged that there might be some cosmic Power beyond his understanding, but would never accept the idea of what he called “an interventionist God.” Ironically, he was the kid with the religious upbringing; I came from an essentially pagan home. In his teens he was an acolyte at Wilmington’s Trinity Church, where in 1953 he would be invited to be best man at my marriage to Margaret Marvel. (Delayed by problems on the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main line north of Wilmington, he arrived — in his officers’ training sailor suit — just in time to see Maggie and me emerge from the church.)

Chip was my oldest friend. We met when he was eight and I had just turned nine. Our fathers — both mechanical engineers — worked together building paper-making machines at the Pusey & Jones Corp. on Wilmington’s riverfront. My brother Frank, 13 years older than I, was at the Naval Academy at the time and had gotten tickets to the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia. The Frank Sangers and the Phil Goldsmiths were going up from Wilmington together. The families assembled at the Goldsmiths’ home in Wawaset, where I first met their son (an only child), Chip. Oddly, the first home Maggie and I owned — a couple of decades later — was the other half of this semi-detached house on Macdonough Road.

Many will remember Stuart as a serious student who graduated with high distinction from Wesleyan. What many of you may not realize, however, is that in an earlier incarnation he was an equally serious jock who showed little promise as a scholar. At Wilmington Friends School, he was the shortstop who backed me up — and first gave me the nickname “Dixie” — when I was on the mound pitching. Sent off to Macdonough, a military school in Baltimore, for an infraction that was never fully disclosed, he went on to play quarterback in a league where Friends School’s Quakers could never have held their own.

I might never have been a Wesleyan Alpha Delt but for Chip, and Chip might never have been one but for me. Chip’s cousin, Ann Hamm, was dating Brother Bob Ludlum in 1948, when I was recruited to go to Wesleyan. Through Chip and his family, I met Bob and actually got to know him and some of the other brothers — Carl Wright, Jack Easton, Gigs Gamon — when I visited them with my friend Mark Attix at a lakeside resort where they were working. Ludlum saw to it that I pledged Alpha Delt, and a year later I did the same for Chip when he followed along to Wesleyan.

After that, it was OCS and a lengthy, if mysterious, career as a Cold Warrior, first in Naval Intelligence and, after Harvard Business School, in what he said was simply international business. Whatever it was, he and Ann traveled the world, in and out of London and Tokyo like commuters and coming to roost in hot spots like Nairobi and Cairo. Along the way, he earned the respect of many for his business acumen and the admiration of others for his cosmopolitan lifestyle. He loved the theater and the opera. He collected fine art as he journeyed around the world. He followed current events with considerable passion, and gave generously in support of his principles. He even ran for the local school board, won, and served until the “teachers’ union,” one of the objects of his sometimes vitriolic scorn, rose up and unseated him.

Stuart leaves no immediate survivors. His beloved Ann died three years ago; his own death occurred on what would have been their 53rd wedding anniversary. As he wished, there will be no funeral. His remains will go where he wanted — with Ann’s, on the waters of the Great South Bay.