Thomas C. Roberts ’21

Thomas C. Roberts was with his family when he died Dec. 8, 1995, at his Princeton home following a stroke. He was 96. He had been the Class of '21's "rugged individualist"-an adventurer, oilman, business executive, devoted family man, and loyal Princetonian.

After attending St. Paul's School, Princeton, and Columbia Business School, he went to Oklahoma in 1923 with a stake of $15,000. Buying oil royalties and leases judiciously, he was able to retire at age 31 in Princeton. There, with Sylvia Goddard of NYC and Connecticut, he raised a close family of three sons and a daughter, and entertained visiting '21ers.

During WWII, Tom helped develop and test a major military innovation, the proximity fuse. It was a miniature vacuum-tube radio fired in antiaircraft and artillery shells. It ranked with the atom bomb and the radar as technology that helped win the war.

In 1946 he and three other Princetonians invested $2,500 each in the infant technology of telemetering. As general manager and then president, Tom built up the Applied Science Corp. of Princeton from a staff of five to over 500, and the company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Following Sylvia's death, Tom married Kathleen Hopkins and acquired a second happy family. He is survived by Kathleen, four children, nine grandchildren, and a stepfamily.

The Class of 1921