Merritt Burnham Low ’29

MERRITT DIED June 25, 1990. He prepared for college at Bordentown Military Inst. At Princeton he was in the band and was undergraduate manager of the University Dining Halls. He was in Arbor inn and roomed with Skip Wells.

He received a Harvard M.D. in 1933 and interned at Children's Hospital in Boston and in Philadelphia, then moved to Greenfield, Mass., and Deerfield, first as school physician at Eaglebrook School, and then in general pediatric practice. He was briefly in Burlington, Vt., and in Illinois, with the American Academy of Pediatrics, but returned to permanent practice in Greenfield.

In 1944 Merritt had a polio attack which put him on crutches for the rest of his life, but without the slightest interruption in his professional and humanitarian career. He was president of the American Academy of Pediatrics and is credited with the move for mandatory child seatbelts in cars.

His main travel ambition was to get to the Great Wall in China, which he did, crutches and all. He was an enthusiastic gardener and chess player.

Merritt married Marion Adriance Johnson in 1934 and Virginia Baff in 1962. In 1982 he married Ann Wild, and she survives, as do his sons, Robert and Richard; his daughters, Barbara Davies and Margaret; and his brother, George'31. The Class extends sincere sympathy to Merritt's family.

The Class of 1929