William Seavey ’52

Bill graduated from Coronado (Calif.) High School, where he was student-body president. At Princeton, and through life, he was one of our high-performance classmates. He joined Dial, majored in SPIA, played football, and was on the Senior Council and the class memorial insurance committee. Bill sang in the Glee Club and was on the Debate Panel and in the Pre-Law Society. His roommates were George Aman, Jed Philp, George Knebel, and Gil Stockton.

He went to Harvard Law School, graduated with the Class of 1955, and married Mary van Beuren. They spent a year in Switzerland, where Bill studied at the University of Geneva, then returned to Coronado, where Bill was a councilman, then mayor, and then assistant U.S. attorney. In 1965 they returned to Switzerland, where Bill completed a Ph.D. in international studies. Their next residence was at Mills (Calif.) College, where Bill taught and was assistant to the president.

 They moved to San Francisco, where Bill practiced law and worked for a number of organizations serving French interests. His affiliations and distinctions there and after are too numerous to specify here.

In 1981, Bill and Mary founded Seavey Vineyard, his focus for the rest of his life. Classmates who went to our mini-reunion in San Francisco were invited there for lunch.

Bill died Sept. 21, 2016. He is survived by his children, Dorothy, Arthur, William, Frederic ’86, and Charles, to whom the class offers best wishes upon the loss of one of our most accomplished classmates.