Sam DeCou died Oct. 26, 2008. He wrote in our 50th yearbook   that he had had “a wonderful life.”  

Sam graduated from the Lawrenceville School. At Princeton he planned to major in chemistry, but he wrote that he changed his mind when, while blowing glass in a lab, he sucked in instead of blowing out. He abandoned science and majored in German. He was a friendly, unassuming member of Cloister Inn and managed the Princeton baseball team.  

Sam served in the Army, mostly in Intelligence, and in Germany met and married Ursula. They had three daughters, Francine, Erika, and Jackie.  

Sam spent 42 years working for New York Life, where he became a chartered underwriter and assistant vice president. He later worked as a consultant and switched from a very long commute to one of 10 paces in his home.  

In his church he served as clerk of session, elder, and tenor in the choir. He also sang with a large singing society and was an avid reader and Pittsburgh Steelers fan. In our yearbook he included these words from Kipling’s poem “If,” which Sam said gave him “an ideal to strive for”:

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings, nor lose the common touch . . .”

Undergraduate Class of 1952