Wendell M. Kury ’62

Wendell Kury died Nov. 12, 2010, in the Medical Center of the Rockies. He had been hospitalized for several months after complications from surgery.

Wendell came to Princeton from Mercersburg Academy. He majored in biology, roomed with Jim Woods, and dined at Dial Lodge. He was on the varsity fencing team, in Whig Clio, and in the Premed Society. He worked at the Crichton Royal Hospital in Scotland in the summer of 1961.

Wendell received a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned the highest grade in the psychiatry class, and then served as an Army major in South Korea. After his residency at Stanford Medical School he lived in Mountain View, Calif., practicing psychiatry. Later he spent two years at Penn State and then practiced in Laramie, Wyo.

A poet, he wrote about anthracite coal miners and other subjects. An appropriate line from his “Easter Morning” poem (2005) was perhaps a premonition: “His breathing continued to stir the white blanket beneath the serene vigilance of the long intravenous sentry, but he could not be aroused.”

The class extends its sympathy to his siblings, Gloria, Franklin, Bernard ’60, and Channing; his former wife, Penny Gilmer; and his fiancée, Janet Logan.