Rodolfo E. Wachsman ’57

Rudy was big — big in body and big in spirit, and big in his pleasure in being alive. “He enjoyed every single little bit of it,” his companion of 22 years, Laurie Dalton, said, meaning his life.

Rudy died Jan. 9, 2021, of COVID-19 at his home in Mexico City. Before entering Deerfield Academy, Rudy spent 18 months in an intensive English-language program. His languages were Spanish and Hungarian. His family left Nazi-allied Hungary in 1942, eventually settling in Mexico. Rudy was 9 when his father, a textile industrialist, died.

At Princeton Rudy won varsity letters in three sports — soccer, squash, and tennis — apparently the only classmate to have done so. He joined Cottage Club before leaving Princeton after sophomore year due to poor grades, due in turn, perhaps, to his athletic schedule. He finished at the University of Virginia, where he then earned an MBA.

After the Chase Bank management-training program, he sold newsprint for many years for a Canadian paper company. In 1975 he married, in Mexico, and joined Televisa, a national TV producer, as vice president for programming. In 1999 Rudy divorced, retired, and began to travel the world with Laurie for much of every year. The two attended every major Princeton class reunion.

Laurie and one of her daughters will scatter his ashes in his favorite places: Manhattan, Torres del Paine in Chile, and Lord Howe Island off Australia.