The following memorial was published online with the June 3, 2015, issue.
John died in Manhattan in 1988.
He came to Princeton from The Canterbury School. John was a member of Charter Club and roomed with Tom Corwin, John Roberts, and Jim Woodwell.
John was a character out of Rabelais. He never spent one weekend in Princeton throughout his four years, driving his T-Bird to New York City (the Carlyle Hotel), Yankee games, and Montauk: "my car only knows one speed—80," he said. In addition, he never ate one meal at Commons, preferring to dine at the King's Court on Witherspoon Street.
John actually did attend classes and particularly liked sociology, his major. In applying to Columbia for graduate school, that university's preeminent social work department urged him to pursue the study of sociology given the acumen he displayed for the subject as an undergraduate. He chose to take the MBA program instead; the idea of John going into social work was preposterous, given his strong views on various social tiers. Nevertheless, he loved the study of sociology and could spout off endless statistics and conclusions.
He married an Austrian countess, Gabriele, in a big cathedral in Vienna. John lived both in New York City and Bridgeport, Conn. At one point, he was helping to back a local private school in Connecticut, indicating that he may have had a child. John worked for the family business, Herman Isacs Inc., of Bridgeport, a meat-rendering firm started by his grandfather on the streets of New York City. A trade journal describes a meat rendering plant: "it bought spoiled meat scraps, animal carcasses, and other 'offal' and transformed this waste product into an inoffensive, high-protein base for such products as designer soaps, medicines, candy (yes, candy), and a whole lot of other things you'd never suspect had meat in them."
Three incidents are particularly interesting: John won a fishing derby off Montauk Sept. 26, 1960 (school was in session), catching a 483-pound and a 428-pound fish. Described in the local newspaper as looking like a football linesman, John was nothing of the sort. The only sport he enjoyed was "dorm bowling" with his favorite ball. If one lived below his room, the noise of "beer-can bowling" could be distracting. However, his favorite "sport" was sending his ball, "boom-boom," down the stairs. At least one knew when he was in town.
In the early 1980s, his picture appeared in local New York papers. An exotic bird had escaped from the Central Park Zoo and landed on the terrace of his Park Avenue apartment. The bird was successfully captured and returned to the zoo. Perhaps this was his contribution to the city.
Finally, for some unknown reason, he misappropriated a police cruiser parked in front of Harry's burger joint on Nassau Street—and was not apprehended. Apparently, the cruiser was running and the act was done on the spur of the moment.
His older brother, Herman ’49, died in 2003. His widow, Gabriele, survived him.