Stephen McCrea Conger ’44

Stephen died Sept. 5, 2022, at his home in Chevy Chase, Md.

He was born in 1922 in Princeton, N.J., and attended Miss Fine’s School, Princeton Country Day School, Lawrenceville, and the Graham-Eckes School from which he graduated before matriculating to Princeton.

Stephen served in the Army Air Forces during World War II, received an A.B. from Princeton, and earned a graduate degree in foreign trade from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in 1950. In 1951, he married Mary Conger and moved to Washington D.C., where he began an almost 30-year career at the U.S. Department of Commerce, working on foreign trade promotion and tariff negotiations across five continents in the American Republics, European, African, and (worldwide) Major Export Projects divisions.

Upon retirement, he and Mary purchased a cattle farm in Virginia, which he operated for 16 years. He also took up the comprehensive study of Dante and later wrote four short books, including a memoir, Down on the Farm. He was an avid outdoorsman and enjoyed fishing, hunting, skiing, swimming, and sailing.

Other family members who attended Princeton University were his daughter Ann ’81, brother Richard Conger ’48, father Arthur Conger 1909, grandfather Rev. Arthur Conger 1876, and others in every generation going back to Richard Stockton in the first graduating Class of 1748.