Alexander Chartis Bell ’34

Lex Bell, a former school teacher turned travel agency executive, died Sept. 21, 1997, of Alzheimer's, once described by his wife, Tita, as "a pretty miserable disease." He was 85.

An active and popular member of the class and, in undergraduate years, of the Triangle Club, Lex joined, after graduation, the independent and highly respected elementary school in Lake Forest, Ill., that his father, Allen C. Bell, had started in 1902 with 20 pupils. By 1934 the enrollment at the Bell School had increased to about 155, and Lex taught there and did administrative work for 26 years.

In 1955 Lex and Catharine "Tita" Johnson, whom he'd met in 1938 at his family's summer place in Ontario and married the following year, bought a principal interest in a fledgling travel agency. Our class barging trip on the inland waterways of France in 1993 was arranged by Lex and Tita.

Surviving, besides Tita, a 1937 graduate of Miss Porter's, are a son, Stewart; three daughters, Chartis Langmaid, Catharine Buxton, and Alexandra Wetteroth, and six grandchildren. To them we offer our sincere sympathies.

The Class of 1934