Howard I. Armstrong ’42

Howie died Sept. 4, 2015, at home in Greenwich, Conn.

Born in Los Angeles, he prepared at Mercersburg Academy before entering Princeton, where he majored in chemistry and was a member of Tiger Inn.

Howie had a 25-year career at Monsanto Chemical Co., first joining the central research department in St. Louis, which was under contract to work on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, N.M.

In 1970, he formed his own company, Armstrong International, which specialized in the import and export of chemicals whose products he once wrote “really originated in Frick Lab at Princeton.” In 1985 he established a chemistry library book fund in honor of his father, H. Howard Armstrong 1905, also a chemistry major. The company dissolved in 2000 when he retired and moved to Connecticut.

Although a business career took him to cities in the United States and abroad, the place that he considered home was Princeton University. Starting with his father in the Class of 1905, and continuing with his uncle in the Class of 1907, his brother in the Class of 1938, his son in the Class of 1977, and his granddaughter in the Class of 2018, the family bonds were strong, but as he expressed in Fifty Years Later, heading the list of honors coming his way was “being given the opportunity to serve as class president.” The ’42 mini-reunions and alumni trips cemented the pleasure of and interactions with classmates over the years.

Howie and his wife, Pat, celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary and Howie’s 95th birthday in July 2015 at the family home in Vermont. She survives him, along with their two daughters, Patty and Sally; two sons, Howard ’77 and Steven; and seven grandchildren.