Casceil M. Aronson ’75

Casceil died on May 31, 2024, in Scottsdale, Ariz., of complications following hip replacement surgery. She was born in Dallas, Tex., and attended Bryan Adams High School there. She had retired only a few years earlier from the Arizona Supreme Court, where she had a 30-year career as a staff attorney.

During her outstanding high school career, Casceil was known by her classmates not only as a very clever student but also as a gentle and kind person. This reputation followed her right throughout her life. Her father had died when she was only nine, but Casceil rose to the challenge and worked her way through much of her education. During her high school years, she was active in speech tournaments and acted and assisted backstage in summer stock for the Harlequin Players in Dallas.

Casceil’s mother and high school guidance counselor were unsure about her going east to study at an Ivy League university, but Casceil was determined to attend Princeton. She was strongly encouraged by her brother and school friends who were so proud that she had been admitted and keenly wanted her to fulfill her academic dreams. Once with us at Princeton, she majored in English and wrote her senior thesis on the Arthurian legends, focusing on the role of the character Merlin throughout the stories. Despite working her way through school and studying hard, Casceil found time to take up fencing and was among the first women on the Princeton fencing team.

Originally thinking that she would become an archeologist after graduation, Casceil instead decided to attend law school at the University of Texas, where she flourished and became a member of the Law Review. She began her distinguished legal career by working for law firms part-time while she was still studying. She became a partner at the Phoenix firm Brown and Bain, where she specialized in complex computer-related antitrust, trade secret, and contract litigation.

After 12 years, Casceil joined the Arizona Supreme Court as a staff attorney and worked there until her retirement in 2021. Her areas of expertise were domestic relations, estate and trust cases, and commercial litigation. She also acted as the training coordinator for the Staff Attorney’s Office and Judicial Suites.

Among Casceil’s survivors are her husband, Peter Aronson; and their children, Jay and Alexander; and her brother, Frederick Linton Medlin. We join them in mourning the loss of our kind and talented classmate.