Eugene Vanderpool ’29

GENE DIED in Athens, Greece, on Aug. 1, 1989. He prepared for college at St. Paul's, and at Princeton he ran freshman track and cross-country. He belonged to Cloister Inn and roomed with Rodney Young, our class's other distinguished Greek archaeologist. In 1932, he went to the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and became a fellow in the new excavation of the agora.

He worked there until 1941, when, as one of the last Americans in Greece at the time of the German invasion, he was imprisoned. He spent much of the war years in Munich, where he conducted classes on ancient Greece for his fellow prisoners. He was exchanged in a prisoner swap in 1944 and went to the Inst. for Advanced Study in Princeton, but by 1946, he was back in Greece.

Gene was an inveterate hiker, and during his travels in the Greek countryside (frequently accompanied by students), he discovered scores of new sites for excavation. His expert knowledge of the battles of the Persian wars and the topography of ancient Greece formed the basis for many of his own articles and inspired the researches of other scholars. One of Gene's most notable achievements was identifying the prison in which Socrates was executed.

In 1935, Gene married Joan Jeffreys at the agora excavations, where she worked as a staff photographer. She survives, as do their children, Joan Gayley, Ann Lewenduski, Eugene Jr. '61, and Lisa Evert, and his sister, Mary Cochran (wife of our Bill). Ten relatives of Gene's have graduated from Princeton. The class extends sincere sympathy to Gene's family in the U.S. and Greece.

The Class of 1929