Michael Patrick McCarthy ’59

Mike died unexpectedly July 3, 2005, when a blood clot formed following cardiac catheterization. Mike stopped breathing, and efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.

Mike came to Princeton from Rye (N.Y.) High School, where he captained the baseball and basketball teams. He played freshman basketball at Princeton, served as a keyceptor and a dormitory captain for the Campus Fund Drive, and joined Cap and Gown.

After a six-month tour as an Army ROTC graduate, Mike, who majored in history, chose journalism as his career. But after six months on The New York Times' city desk, and a semester at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, he sensed that his calling was in education. Under the guidance of Eric Goldman, Mike earned a master's in teaching at Johns Hopkins and embarked on his life's career.

In 1970 he completed a Ph.D. program in history at Northwestern, merging his two greatest interests: teaching and history. Mike spent the rest of his life researching, writing, and teaching. In 2002 he published The Living City, an account of Baltimore's mid-20th-century downtown revitalization.

Mike is survived by his wife, Carol, and daughters Claire '84 and Catherine '90, to whom the class expresses heartfelt sympathy.

The Class of 1959