James D. McLellan Jr. ’47

During World War II, Jim served on a destroyer in the Pacific theater. Returning, he graduated (like so many of us) in 1949 and married June Mehring in 1952.

He started his business career in New York, working in sales with a wholesale lumber company, but soon moved to Bryn Mawr, Pa., and into an absorbing career as a stockbroker with a distinguished Philadelphia firm, where there was, he tells us, “never a dull day.”

Jim’s Princeton roommate, Julian Thompson ’49, remembers Jim as a “gregarious, embraceable friend . . . widely and intelligently read.” He continued his extensive reading throughout life — including a cover-to-cover foray into Ulysses — noting after this accomplishment that “anyone who claims to understand [this book] is lying.”

Looking back on his Princeton days, Jim, a very loyal classmate, wrote: “If there is a heaven, I hope it’s like the second entry of Holder.” Like so many of us, he also worried about the “ominous future of the changed world” confronting the next generations. These concerns were more than counterbalanced by his loving enjoyment of life with June and his family: three daughters and, late in life, three grandsons.

To them all, we send this appreciation of Jim’s life and our heartfelt sympathy.