John was a Washington correspondent for Business Week, adviser to the president of Fannie Mae, lobbyist for American Bankers Association and National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, and communications director of the Peace Corps. An accident took John’s life Jan. 4, 2022, when he died of a traumatic head wound after slipping on ice during a winter storm.
Raised in Gladwyne, Pa., John attended the Haverford School. At Princeton, he majored in music and dined at Cloister until midway through junior year, when he left and (writing in our 10th-reunion yearbook) “bummed into theater, sold modern art, and dug ditches around Independence Hall waiting to go into six months Army duty.”
After a snowbound tour at Fort Jackson, he ended up in Oak Ridge, Tenn., on the daily newspaper. Several promotions later he quit as city editor and moved to Washington, reporting capital politics at the Food and Drug Administration, earning a degree at George Washington, working for Business Week, and joining Fannie Mae as a prelude to founding his own public relations firm.
Retiring from the financial world in 1991, he and his wife, Marnie, opened Company Flowers, a highly successful florist in Arlington, Va.
John is survived by his wife of more than 55 years, Marnie; son Peter; and six grandchildren. He was predeceased in 2016 by daughter Wendy.