Robert Terrence O’Keeffe ’66

Terry, affectionately known to classmates as the Blade, died Feb. 5, 2020, the result of a stroke.

Terry entered Princeton with our class after graduating from Mount St. Joseph High in Baltimore. Captain of the track team our senior year, he was one of the nation’s leading milers. He majored in architecture and belonged to Tiger Inn.

In March of our senior year, Terry withdrew from Princeton. He served in the Army, including a 1968-69 tour in Vietnam working in Army intelligence. He returned to Princeton and graduated summa cum laude in 1971, this time majoring in art history. He went on to study anthropology at Rutgers.

Terry was a research scientist at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg, N.Y., specializing in the study of primates, until his retirement in 2009. He mastered Hungarian and was published in Hungarian literary magazines. He died just weeks before the scheduled publication of his book on a 1913 espionage scandal involving the Austro-Hungarian army general staff.

Terry is survived by his wife, Joanne; daughter Catherine Purvis; sons Timothy and Michael; and brother Timothy, to all of whom the class extends its heartfelt condolences.