John M. Williams ’48

Jack died Aug. 5, 2015, at age 88.

He was a native New Yorker, and one of several Choate School alumni in the Class of ’48, along with John Vennema, Joe Hixson, and Cyril Nelson. Before college, Jack spent a year in the Merchant Marine “teaching small-boat handling.” On campus, he was on the editorial board of The Daily Princetonian and a competitive tennis player. At Dean Godolphin’s suggestion, he left for a while at the end of his junior year and came back to graduate in 1950 cum laude in politics, winning a thesis prize.

The Army decided that Jack’s poor vision was not a handicap to military service, so he spent 14 months “in frozen Korea” as a radio operator. His subsequent business career was in public relations and advertising, first at Lever Brothers and at Dun & Bradstreet, where he worked for 17 years and became director of corporate communications.

Meanwhile, on Long Island, he was the founder/president of Friends of the Bay, which worked to save the Oyster Bay Wildlife Refuge, and also served as mayor of Centre Island, “beating back overdevelopment.”

Jack’s survivors are Joan, his wife of 58 years; their daughter, Maris Baker; son Roderick; and three grandchildren.