Ledlie I. Laughlin Jr. ’52

Ledlie’s father was in the Class of 1912. Ledlie graduated from St. Paul’s, then served as a Winant Volunteer in East London before coming to Princeton. He ate at Quad, was president of the St. Paul’s Society, and belonged to the Student Christian Association.

After earning a degree in history from Princeton, he went on to earn a bachelor of sacred theology degree at the General Theological Seminary in 1956, and then entered upon a career of leadership in a succession of challenging urban parishes.

At Grace Church in Jersey City he served a congregation of chiefly poor, black, and Latino persons. While dean of Trinity Cathedral in Newark, he merged the small white congregation with a large black congregation whose church had burned. The Cathedral hosted the first national Black Power Conference in 1967. From 1972 to 1992 Ledlie was rector of St. Luke-in-the-Fields, a Greenwich Village church that encouraged membership of the gay community and those with AIDS. His final post was at St. James Church in Florence, Italy.

Ledlie died Jan. 21, 2019. To his wife, Rebecca; and children Ledlie III, Rebecca, and Joshua, the class offers its sympathy and its respect for their father’s life of service to those often overlooked.