Thaddeus T. Hutcheson Jr. ’63

Thad — attorney, businessman, expert sailor, conservationist, intellectual seeker, landscape painter, storyteller par excellence — died peacefully July 11, 2020, in his native Houston following a protracted struggle with heart disease and Parkinson’s. 

After Hill School this sixth-generation Texan studied at the Woodrow Wilson School, ate at Cottage, and befitting his razor-sharp cleverness, chaired The Princeton Tiger. Then came law school at the University of Texas and a distinguished career in energy law at Baker Botts. 

For many years Thad worked for cleaner water in developing countries, enduring bouts of cholera, malaria, and dysentery in Puerto Rico, Russia, and China, managed a water company in Argentina, and supported expansion the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Control in Bangladesh. 

Empty hours during business travel led to voracious reading of classics. While earning a master’s in comparative theology at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Thad deciphered sacred texts in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. As a sailor he won the 1971 Soling world championship and loved teaching relatives at Galveston Bay and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 

At the time of his death, Thad was survived by his wife, Rebecca (she died Oct. 5, 2020); daughter Genevieve Butcher ’89; son Curtis; six grandchildren; siblings Houghton ’68, Palmer, and Lucy Barrow; and Lenox McClendon Reed, his first wife and mother of his children.