Russell H. Carpenter Jr. ’63

Russ died Sept. 14, 2017, two weeks after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He was our salutatorian, a Rhodes scholar, and senior counsel in the Washington firm Covington & Burling.

Born in Providence, R.I., he attended Moses Brown School, where he was a long-standing trustee and in 2014 made the school’s largest gift ever to its endowment. At Princeton he was in the Woodrow Wilson School, Glee Club, president of the French Club, Whig-Clio, and secretary of Cloister Inn. His roommates included Brogan and Cline. His 1963 salutatory address bemoaned the absence of women and raedas automatarias (cars); armed with translation we booed on cue.

After graduation Russ earned degrees at Oxford and Yale Law School, wrote speeches for presidential candidate Ed Muskie, then joined a D.C. firm, where he had an international practice (“in fluent French and clumsy Russian”) and litigated antitrust, land-grant law, and toxic-health liabilities. He also did lots of pro bono work and pushed for human rights. His career, he wrote in our 50th-reunion book, kept him “intellectually alive, constantly getting on top of new areas, never bogging down in repetitive work, and never bored or ready to retire.”

Broadly admired, he served as class agent and vice president in the 1980s. We share our sadness with his sister, Lee Carpenter-Long, and brother, Thomas.