John, a retired insurance executive, died May 5, 2012, at a Long Island, N.Y., nursing center where he was being treated for a stroke he suffered several months earlier. His cousin and close friend Norman Thomas ’63 said, “The class has lost a wonderful, talented, and funny guy that too few had the pleasure of enjoying.”
He came from Friends Academy and Huntington, N.Y., where he lived his entire life. At Princeton (his father was ’31) he majored in English and wrote his thesis on John Dos Passos, roomed with Allen Black and Lloyd Axelrod, and ate at Key and Seal. After serving in combat in Vietnam as a specialist 4th class with the Army’s 1st Infantry Division (the famous Big Red One), he worked for a bank and an airline and then had a long career as a casualty-reinsurance underwriter in Manhattan, retiring from SCOR Reinsurance.
John, who was divorced many years ago, will be interred with a veteran’s honor guard at the Long Island National Cemetery. The class extends its sympathy to his mother, Frances T. Gates; his sister, Nancy Gerber; and his brother, Norman.