Peter Benton Spruance ’51

PETER SPRUANCE died Sept. 27, 1992, suddenly and tragically in Newton, South Australia.

Peter was born in Philadelphia, the son of Benton Murdoch Spruance, a noted color lithographer. He attended Germantown Friends School and at Princeton majored in the Woodrow Wilson School (S.P.I.A.). He belonged to Princeton Cooperative Club and was active in WhigClio and Democratic Party causes. He roomed with Layman Allen, Bill Norris, Don Oberdorfer '52, and Don Stokes.

His concern for the disadvantaged led him to attend Quaker work camps in high school, and at Princeton he worked in the reform campaigns of Joseph Clark and Richardson Dilworth for mayor and district attorney of Philadelphia. He rose to lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War and afterward obtained a law degree from Penn. He worked for the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, between stints with Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine in New York and a practice in San Francisco.

Peter foresook a legal and political career in the U.S. and moved to Australia to remain close to his wife, Rosemary, and their son Winston, to whom he was devoted. He was admitted to the Adelaide Bar and is remembered by his colleagues there as believing that "ordinary people deserved robust representation."

The Class extends its sympathy to his son Winston and his former wife Rosemary.

The Class of 1951