Frank C. Henry ’47

Frank served as a pilot in the Army Air Force before joining us in 1945.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in 1949, he married Grace McCanna in 1950.

The law soon lured him away from his family’s telephone business. Moving to Ann Arbor, Mich., he “studied his cases in a small home full of toys and boys” — as he wrote in our class book — and earned his law degree from Michigan in 1956. Combining his engineering and legal skills, he joined a Cleveland patent law firm and soon became a partner.

Retiring in 1978, he and Grace eagerly moved to Center Sandwich, N.H., where they reveled in new “unstructured” but still-busy lives. Using his talents of “vision, fairness, and diplomacy,” Frank served for many years as a trustee of Deerfield Academy (his alma mater) and of other nonprofit organizations.

He and Grace shared a love of blue-water sailboat cruising, which led them to buy an old ketch and a seacoast summer home in Maine that also served as a vacation magnet for their four children and eight grandchildren — always the centerpiece of their lives.

Frank lived a happy life and he died peacefully Oct. 5, 2009, with Grace and the family present. We send them our sympathy and fond wishes.