James, or “Des,” as he liked to be called, spent his entire career as a respected and admired educator at the Darrow School in New Lebanon, N.Y. He died Sept. 8, 2014, at Berkshire Medical Center after a long illness. He was 83.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, he was the son of the Rev. and Mrs. Robert James McCracken. Des entered Princeton from Horace Mann School in the Bronx and roomed with Lowell Lentz, Gordon Marshall, and Hank Bothfeld. Hank, All-American hockey captain of the 1953 team that won the Pentagonal League Championship, recalls that Des was quiet and rather shy, but had a fantastic statistical knowledge of all things hockey despite the fact that he didn’t play the game, and was better informed than Hank and the Tiger team.
Des specialized in modern languages, belonged to Quadrangle Club, and fulfilled his military obligations before joining the Darrow School faculty. For more than 40 years he was a fixture at the school, where he was housemaster, chaired the French department, coached hockey, and was school librarian.
Des’ survivors include his brother, R. Norman; Norman’s wife, Eleanor; and their children. Des never married. His “children” were the innumerable students whose lives he greatly touched.