Norman H. Donald III ’59

Norm died July 11, 2018, at his home on an 80-acre farm in north Georgia. A third-generation Princetonian, he came to us from St. Paul’s, where he rowed on a crew that went to the Henley Regatta in 1954. He continued rowing as well as playing rugby at Princeton, where he ate at Ivy, majored in Romance languages, and roomed as a senior in an 1879 Hall suite with Rob Garrett, Stu White, and Rodney Williams.

Norm went on to Harvard Law School and spent most of his legal career at Skadden, Arps in New York City. Starting there in 1967 as the then-young firm’s 18th hire, he remained as a partner for more than three decades, specializing in corporate mergers and acquisitions as the firm grew into a legal giant with dozens of offices and hundreds of partners. As he later related, this high-pressure lawyering took a toll on his family life, leading to divorces from his first two wives.

Retiring to rural Georgia with his third wife, from whom he was later amicably divorced, he reinvented himself as a venture capitalist. It was here that he sustained personal tragedy, losing his son, Norman IV, to brain cancer at age 32.

Norm was survived by his daughter, two grandchildren, and his brother.