George died Feb. 8, 2011, at the Cheshire Medical Center-Dartmouth Hitchcock Keene after a brief illness. He had lived in Walpole, N.H., for 30-odd years.

He prepared at Detroit University School, where one of his teachers told him that he had the chance of a snowball in hell of getting into Princeton. He was known as “Snowball” for the remainder of his high school years.

At Princeton he ate at Charter, played 150-pound football, and majored in chemical engineering. After graduation, he started a 24-year career with Standard Oil of Ohio in Cleveland. He subsequently started a second career in watershed management and water-pollution control as executive director of the Lake Erie Watershed Conservation Foundation and executive secretary of the Three Rivers Watershed District. For this work he received several awards.

Upon retirement to Walpole, he was instrumental in establishing the Walpole recycling center, served as chairman of the Connecticut River Watershed Council, and was appointed by the governor as one of New Hampshire’s representatives for the Connecticut River Joint Commissions, on which he served nearly two decades.  

He was predeceased by his wife of 62 years, Elizabeth Rowland Watkins. He is survived by his brother, John ’45; four children, Harriet Mooney, Robin Sedgwick, Margaret Watkins, and George Jr. ’75; three grandchildren; three step-grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; three step-great-grandchildren; and five nephews. He will be sorely missed.

Undergraduate Class of 1941