Lane P. Brennan ’54

Lane died May 10, 2018.

He came to us from Rye (N.Y.) High School, where he was active in football, basketball, and baseball. At Princeton Lane majored in modern languages and the special program in European civilization, writing his thesis on “Cultural Factors in the Disintegration and Collapse of France (1931-1940).” He was a member of Cannon Club.

After Princeton Lane earned a law degree at Georgetown University and then spent a year as a clerk for the chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court before accepting a teaching appointment at Stanford Law School. This led in turn to an associate’s slot at a major firm in San Francisco and ultimately to a 30-year career at Wells Fargo Bank, from which he retired as chief counsel in 1993.

Lane was a loyal alumnus and classmate even though he had not set foot on the campus since graduating. He reported in the yearbook for our 50th reunion that he enjoyed the fact that close friends didn’t find him to fit the Ivy League stereotype and wrote, “It’s nice to discover that one can at least fool some of the people all of the time.”

He is survived by his children, Suzanne, Steven, Clay, Liz, and Caty.