William A. Freiday ’83

Will Freiday died Sept. 26, 2011, in Bayville, N.J.

Will graduated from Wall High School in Wall Township, N.J., where he was an honor student and National Merit Scholarship finalist. At Princeton, he majored in religion and spent endless happy hours with his Colonial Club friends debating the nature of human knowledge.

He studied Japanese at Princeton and also during the summer at Middlebury. Following graduation, he spent a year in Kyoto, Japan, studying the Japanese tea ceremony. He earned a master’s degree from UC, Berkeley in 1988. Will was an avid and accomplished student of many languages, including not only Japanese but also German, Armenian, and Spanish. He had a lifelong devotion to art, music, and religion.

Will was an intelligent, thoughtful man, with a reverent core lightened by irreverent humor. He had a great capacity for friendship and an acute sense of what was important and what was not. True to form, in a letter from Japan in 1984, he signed off with “Love, love, love (it’s all you need).”

Will is survived by his sister, Gail Freiday Crockett; and his nephews Scott and Drew.