Donald B. Reed ’48

Don was born in Bethel, Conn., in June 1925. He died a week before his 94th birthday in Lee’s Summit, Mo., a Kansas City suburb.

After Navy service, Don graduated Princeton with high honors in electrical engineering, earned an MBA at the Wharton School, then was on three years active duty with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea.

His lifelong business career was in export power-plant sales (electrical turbines), first with Trane Corp. (office in Princeton), and then with De Laval Turbines, of La Crosse, Wis. There Don met and married Rita Jean Coburn. With his career with De Laval mostly in East Asia, Don and Rita and their daughter, Marti, who now lives in Sydney, Australia, lived for years in Singapore and then Hong Kong before retirement in 1990 to Lee’s Summit.

Their ardently pursued retirement pastimes included classical music in Kansas City and opera performances in Des Moines — and for Don, worldwide contacts via his ham radio antenna in the backyard.

Rita and Don’s marriage lasted approximately half a century until her death. They are survived by their daughter, Marti Travers; two grandchildren, Samantha and Daniel Travers; and Don’s sister, Norma Moulton.