Gilbert Kuhn Garretson ’35

Gil died on May 16, 2002, in Morristown [N.J.] Memorial Hospital, not far from his retirement home in Basking Ridge.

He prepared at Pingry School, where he was a member of the swimming team, orchestra, and Glee Club. At Princeton, Gil majored in biology, joined the band and Terrace Club, and roomed with Dick Keppler. After earning his DDS in 1939 at Columbia University's School of Dentistry, he joined his father's dental practice in Newark.

This his many college friends expected. But his marriage a few months later to Gertrude "Trudy" A. Ganschow on the Saturday of '39's Princeton-Yale football game stunned them. "We knew they were dating," a friend said decades later. "But Gil was wild about Princeton football and never missed a game."

Trudy kept the home fires burning while Gil was in the Navy during World War II, and joined him at Princeton football games and parties for the next 55 years. When he resigned his Montclair [N.J.] Golf Club membership and closed his practice in 1989, they spent summers in Brielle, N.J., and wintered in Stuart, Fla. When health problems forced a move to a retirement home, Gil was elated to find '35ers in residence.

At his death, Gil was survived by Trudy; his children Robert C., Betsy Vanderbilt, and Ginny Ogden; nine grandchildren; eight great-grandchildren; and his cousin, Wilson M. Hopkins '55.

The Class of 1935