Don died Aug. 31, 2012, after a brief battle with stomach cancer. He was 85.
A lifelong New Yorker, he came to us from Horace Mann School, entering in the summer of 1944. After Navy service he returned to Princeton, graduating in 1949 with highest honors in engineering. He then earned a master’s degree in philosophy and economics at Oxford.
Over the next six decades he was a management consultant and later an investment counselor for Booz Allen Hamilton; headed voter-registration teams for Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter; was national field director for Head Start and executive director of the Democratic National Committee; and served on President Carter’s White House staff. Don authored Bankers, Builders, Knaves, and Thieves plus biographies of jazz superstars Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, and Max Roach. Don was a literary magazine editor and a published poet.
A memorial service was held Sept. 14 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, where Don was a trustee for almost three decades. Don is survived by his daughter, Alice Maggin; her husband, Wayne Nelson; and their daughter, Lila. All who knew Don are deeply grateful for the gifts he gave us and for the life he lived so fully and triumphantly.