Barry Caskey ’57

Barry died Oct. 10, 2014, in Princeton, surrounded by family. The cause was congestive heart failure, but he had suffered other illnesses for a long time.

At major and off-year reunions, his was an ever-present face with a smile that invited quotidian commentary and easy conversation. He served the class well — as president from 1972 to 1977, class reunion chairman in 1972, and reunion food chairman for our 40th, 45th, 50th, and 55th. He received the class service award at our 50th.

Barry attended the Haverford School outside his native Philadelphia. By graduation, the farthest he had traveled was to New Haven, to visit Yale. At Princeton, Barry majored in art history, graduating cum laude.

He spent 33 varied and hectic years in advertising, mostly on the sales side, beginning with Benton & Bowles (“slave wages but adequate benefits”) and eventually shifting into management. “It’s not a business to grow old in,” he quipped.

He and Carol Kirvan, a United Airlines stewardess when they met, married in 1961. They had four children (one of them, Diana, graduated from Princeton in 1985) and seven grandchildren. Carol, a longtime Princeton township and borough tax assessor, died of cancer in 2008. Their lives together appeared happy — they had “many, many good times,” he wrote in one reunion book.