Richard P. Unsworth ’48

Dick was a Presbyterian minister, an eminent New England academic, an author, a classical and jazz musician, and a lifelong activist for human rights and justice. He grew up in Trenton, N.J., and did a postgraduate high school year at Mt. Hermon (Mass.) School. That year he met Joy Merritt, then a senior at the Northfield School, just across the Connecticut River.

At college, Dick worked in the Holder dining halls, organized the Prospect Cooperative Club, was president of the Westminster Foundation, and was a church deacon and bassist in the Tiger Sextet (a “society” jazz group). He and Joy began their 66-year marriage right after his Princeton graduation.

After graduate studies at Yale and Harvard, Dick taught religion and was a three-time chaplain and a professor of religion at Smith College from 1954 to 1964, 1968 to 1980, and 1996 to 1999. From 1963 to 1967 he was on the Dartmouth faculty. From 1980 to 1989, he headed the then-recently merged Northfield and Mt. Hermon schools. Thereafter “temporarily” (for six years) he led the Berkshire School, before returning to the chaplaincy and faculty at Smith.

After retirement, and soon after Joy’s death in 2014, Dick moved to an assisted-living facility in Arlington, Mass., then to Needham, Mass., and at the end, briefly, to hospice care in Dedham, Mass. He died there Sept. 14, 2016, at age 89.

He is survived by his children Sarah, John ’80, Mary, and Lucy; and six grandchildren.