Richard Atcheson ’56

Richard Atcheson died peacefully March 23, 2006. His wife of 44 years, Jean, and his daughter Katie were with him.

At Princeton, Atch majored in English and was a member of Campus Club. He helped co-found the Boomerangs quartet and joined the Princeton Tigertones, serving in his senior year as their musical director. In recent years he joyfully joined a small group of 1950s Tones who met annually in New England to sing.

Atch wrote the "On the Campus" column in the Princeton Alumni Weekly for an entire year. He learned the newspaper business as Jack Mabley's "legman" at the Chicago Daily News. Senior editor and feature writing positions followed at national magazines, including Holiday Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Saturday Review, Lear's, and AARP The Magazine, where he was executive editor at his retirement.

A memorial service was held in April at Trinity Church in Princeton and a gathering in June at his home. Both were attended by many friends, old and new, and featured music he loved and stories he loved to tell.

In addition to his wife, Atch leaves two daughters, Dorothy and Katie, and a son, Nicholas; three foster children, Kate, Michael, and Brian Skinner; and his sister, Maryellen VanderSluis, and her family. The class extends deep sympathy to them all.