Remington Squier Ball ’57

Spike died May 18, 2017, at age 81 at the Ball family home in Lafayette, Ind. He had been in hospice care, yet at the end was alert and lively.

After Exeter, Spike entered Princeton with the Class of 1957 but graduated in 1959. At Princeton, he was on the varsity football and diving teams. Over the next five years, he earned the difficult license des lettres at the University of Paris. Then followed a double doctorate in French and German at Middlebury College. This led to 40 years of teaching at East Stroudsburg University. He was a diving coach there and then taught springboard diving privately at a diving facility with a 14-foot pool he had built next to his house.

In 2010, Spike placed second in the three-meter springboard diving event at the U.S. Diving Masters National Championships for those 35 and older.

Spike’s near-constant companion during the last two years of his life was a niece, Cecily Schneider, also a springboard diver. After a legal battle, she gained custody of Spike. Shortly thereafter, she moved Spike back to Indiana. Spike had been briefly married. He is survived by Cecily, sister Annette Winter Bottum, and five other nieces and nephews.