Thomas Sherman Dignan Jr. ’49

HAVING ENDURED extensive cancer treatments with great courage and a tremendous will to live, Tom passed away at his home in Kennebunkport, Me., on July 1, 1989. Tom was born on Apr. 17, 1927, in East Orange, N.J. He prepared for college at Exeter and then served in the Navy from July 1945 to July 1946. At Princeton, he majored in geology, belonged to Tiger Inn, and played J.V. football and hockey and the varsity lacrosse.

In Sept. 1948, Tom married Suzanne Etnier. After graduating in 1950, Tom moved his family to New Mexico, where he worked as a geologist. He then returned east and graduated from Harvard Business School in 1953. He worked in N.Y.C. as an investment banker and as a V.P. of a small oil-producing company before he moved back to the Southwest. For many years, he was the proprietor of the O-Bar-O Ranch, in Carrizozo, N.M. In the early 1970s, Tom moved east to Maine and started a commercial fishing business. He was a member of a committee that worked to implement the 200-mile fishing limit. In 1976, having divorced some years earlier, he married Irene Lumsden.

Tom is survived by his widow, Irene; two sons, Michael and Chase; three daughters, Virginia, Holly, and Devon Cuchiara; and a brother, Dennis. Another brother, David '54, died just five days after Tom. We extend our profound sympathy to the entire Dignan family at the loss of this most kind and generous of men.

The Class of 1949