Horace H. Irvine II ’59

Hod died Oct. 14, 2019, at his home in White Bear Lake, Minn., where he grew up.

He prepped at St. Paul’s, playing football, tennis, and, of course, hockey. He played freshman hockey at Princeton, worked on Orange Key, managed the varsity hockey team in 1957 and 1958, majored in economics, and joined Tiger Inn. He abandoned typical undergraduate life in 1958 when he married Sandra Swanson.

Following graduation he worked as an account executive for Merrill Lynch in St. Paul, Minn., and earned an MBA from Harvard in 1965. He worked briefly in production management with a small electronics firm, then left in 1966 to start his own company, Hadco. By 1969 it employed 75 people and ultimately became the largest printed circuit board company in the United States.

Hod was a devoted supporter of the arts, especially opera. He served as board chair and was a driving force behind the Boston Lyric Opera until the time of his death. He was a founding board member of the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul, and served on the boards of the National Opera Institute (as president), the Minnesota Opera, the American Repertory Theatre, and Opera America.

To quote Hod’s obituary, “Hod had many loves. He was married three times, to Sandra, Andrea, and Cassandra.” He was survived by a sister, a brother, eight children, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.