Truman died of pancreatic cancer Oct. 5, 2008, in New York City.
He came to us from Ladue (Mo.) High School, where he was captain of the football team. At Princeton he majored in philosophy, took his meals at Key and Seal, and roomed his senior year with Jim McDonnell, Jim O’Rorke, and Al Burke.
After graduation, Truman began an advertising career with D’Arcy Advertising, then moved to Bristol-Myers as product manager for Excedrin. In 1973 he moved to Citicorp’s Consumer Products Division and then became president/CEO of Carte Blanche. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, he became an entrepreneur, establishing a couple of companies, one of which he sold to Pfizer.
Truman was a self-effacing man who believed his life had been a full one and that the following Irish saying best sums up what he would have asked of his family, friends, and classmates:
Grieve not
Nor speak of me with tears
But laugh and talk of me
As though I were beside you
I loved you so
’Twas heaven here with you.
To his wife, Jane; his children, Christy, Ashley, and Jeffrey; and his grandchildren, Christopher and Aubin, the class extends its sincere sympathy.