George C. Thomas ’57

George died Oct. 18, 2020, after a long decline brought on by Lewy body dementia. He left Princeton bound for the ministry but instead found his life’s calling in the visual arts.

Coming from Baltimore, The Hill School, and an English public school, at Princeton George majored in art history, ate at Cap and Gown, and was on the varsity crew, almost making the Olympics. His roommates included Bill Farlie, Paul Roberts, Norm Rousseau, and Bruce Woodger. Bruce recalled George as “the nicest man I ever knew.”

With a master’s in fine arts, George involved himself in various media, switching excitedly from watercolors to etching to lithography, oils, pastels, and eventually photography, which he taught at Andover and MIT.

George and his wife, Lynn Zimmerman, bought a farm on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, raising livestock and table vegetables while giving George an escape into fly-fishing, his peaceful nature never disturbed by omnipresent black flies. “He had a capacity to focus, to lose himself,” Lynn recalls.

For their two sons’ schooling, they moved in 1983 to Nantucket, where George established a studio, returning each summer to Cape Breton. George created art for another quarter century until the Lewy effects made that impossible. Thoughtful and empathetic, George never complained of his illness, which in the last two years forced Lynn to use a lifting machine to help him leave bed and settle in a chair, always contented.

His survivors include Lynn, sons Jonathan ’04 and Nathaniel, and two grandchildren.