“Mel” died Nov. 28, 2008, in Bryn Mawr (Pa.) Hospital.
He and his wife, Suzanne, lived in Haverford, Pa., and he practiced estate law for 57 years in Philadelphia, with vacations on Penobscot Bay in Maine.
Mel was born in Wynnewood and prepped at Penn Charter School. At Princeton, he roomed with Henry Roberts and was a member of the International Relations Club, Whig-Clio, and Campus Club. He earned his bachelor’s degree in English in 1943, before following our ROTC unit into three years of service during World War II and being discharged as a first lieutenant.
He earned a law degree from Penn. In our 60th-reunion directory, Mel recalled three “epiphanies” in his life: declining an off-day joyride in an ROTC Piper Cub that crashed and killed its passengers; ascending with Suzanne by gondola to the peak of a German mountain in 1965 instead of pausing at a hotel terrace — just before a snow avalanche wiped out the terrace; and having his appendix rupture in the Philadelphia airport, with a hospital nearby, instead of en route to Maine.
Besides Suzanne, Mel is survived by his daughters, Diana Wilder and Amy Alexander, and two grandchildren. They have our sincere condolences on the loss of a wise and devoted man.