1940s

George Oliver Curme III ’42

George Oliver Curme III ’42, an agriculturalist, was born on Dec. 14, 1921, in Charleston, W.V. The son of George O. Curme, Jr. and the former Lillian Hale, he prepared for college at White Plains High School in New Jersey. On the Hill, George Curme was a member of the hockey team and Sigma Phi. He spent two years at Hamilton devoting himself to studies in chemistry, before departing in 1942.

A year later, George Curme entered the Army Air Corps and served in World War II until his discharge as a 2nd lieutenant in December of 1945. On Sept. 6, 1946, he married Carolyn McKewen in Scarsdale, N.Y. Two years later, George Curme earned his B.S. degree from West Virginia University, concentrating in animal husbandry, a field to which he devoted his career, especially with Virginia Harvestore, where he served as president. He also earned an M.S. degree in animal nutrition from the University of Connecticut. 

George O. Curme III, who once noted that his time on College Hill helped him learn to “be independent,” died on Jan. 23, 2016, in Roanoke, Va. Preceded by his wife and a son, he is survived by two sons, a daughter, seven grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
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Walter Ellsworth Ogilvie III ’42

Walter Ellsworth Ogilvie III ’42, a physician and advocate for the arts, was born on Sept. 12, 1920, in Buffalo, N.Y., into a family with Hamilton in its genes. His mother was Marie Spaulding Ogilvie. His father, Walter E. Ogilvie, Jr., Class of 1915, who worked in finance, graduated from the College, as did his uncles: George E. Ogilvie, Class of 1914, Geoffrey A. Ogilvie, Class of 1916, and John W.G. Ogilvie ’24. His cousin George E. Ogilvie, Jr. graduated in 1941, and his grandfather, Walter E. Ogilvie, a businessman who devoted much of his career to Cuban interests, received an honorary degree from the College in 1913.

“Terry” Ogilvie lived his first seven years in Havana, Cuba, before his family moved to New Jersey. He graduated from Hackensack High School in 1938. On the Hill, he majored in science and joined Chi Psi. He was the freshman manager for the football team, fenced for his first three years and was a member of the Interfraternity Council. His love of the arts was apparent even as he focused on the sciences. “Out to absorb all the culture procurable at Hamcoll,” says the 1942 Hamiltonian, “he vagabonds art courses and delves into the intricacies of Chopin and Beethoven.”

World War II defined the era of his graduation. “The Class of 1942 of Hamilton College will soon be leaving our happy, peaceful hill, and its members will be making their contributions to the protection and the purification of our country and therefore our College,” President William H. Cowley wrote in The Hamiltonian. Terry Ogilvie proved to be no exception. He enrolled in medical school at the Columbia University of College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, graduating in May 1945, and was commissioned into the U.S. Navy as an assistant surgeon, lt. (jg). For two years he worked as an intern at the Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn before moving to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Bainbridge, Md. He spent the next three years at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Swannanoa, N.C.

After his military service, Dr. Ogilvie finished his medical residency at Methodist before moving south, to Ashville, N.C., to work on the staffs of the Mission and St. Joseph’s hospitals. He opened a private practice from which he retired in July 1990. “I make time to do lots of things, and make time to do nothing,” he wrote 50 years after he graduated from Hamilton. “I have traveled (Patagonia to Tibet), have done archaeology with Earthwatch, have enlarged my interests in photography and have taken more than several courses at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, where I am a member of the board.” At that point he was planning a trip to a remote district in Mexico to work with an anthropologist.

Terry Ogilvie helped to establish a “College for Seniors” at UNCA and was first an instructor in it, then, in his later years, a student. He created the Ogilvie Scholarship Fund for UNCA students of art and music. He was a lifetime lover of classical music and served on the boards of the Asheville Symphony and Asheville Art Museum. Photography, too, was an enduring passion. He would produce images from his travels to Cuba, India, Mexico and Guatemala in his own darkroom. In the 1960s, he founded the f/32 Gallery, at 32 Biltmore Ave., where local photographers gathered to exhibit and discuss their work. In his later years, when his sight was poor, he’d sit in the front row so he could still offer comments during discussions. Bridge, too, was central to his life. He started playing as a child and became a “life master,” a member of the American Contract Bridge League and president of the Asheville Bridge Group. For 30 years he played with friends on two Thursday nights a month until failing eyesight forced him to put down the cards and serve as a mentor to novice players.

Walter E. Ogilvie III, a man of art as well as science who maintained close ties to his alma mater throughout his life, died on Nov. 29, 2015. Survivors include three nieces. He outlived a sister and a brother.
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Edward Eldred Potter ’42

Edward Eldred Potter ’42, a multi-talented artist who carved out a career in the insurance industry, was born on Feb. 5, 1921, in Plattsburgh, N.Y. The son of Carlton Potter, owner of an insurance company, and the former Maud Clark, he came to Hamilton and pursued his interest in English and music by joining the Emerson Literary Society and the College Choir and Octet. Soon after earning his degree, he entered World War II, serving as a master sergeant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 1055th Port Construction Group in -England and France. During his service he received a Good Conduct Medal and the European African Middle Eastern Service Medal with two bronze service stars recognizing his participation in two campaigns.

After his discharge in November 1945, Ed Potter returned to Plattsburgh intending to fulfill his dream of becoming an English teacher. However, before he could earn a graduate degree in education, he heeded the call of the family business and joined his father’s insurance agency, which he managed until 1952. The following year he accepted a job as a fire insurance adjuster at General Adjustment Bureau in Rochester, N.Y. He commented in the Hamilton Alumni Review, “I’m glad to be able to say that I am now nearer the Hill.”

Ed Potter met “the love of (his) life,” Alice E. Scott, in 1965, and the couple moved to Hartford, Conn., where he continued his career in the insurance industry at Security Insurance Group. In addition to work as a claim examiner, he pursued his original passion by becoming editor of the employee newspaper. This served as a springboard to becoming a writer for Aetna Life and Casualty, where he worked until his retirement in 1986. However, Ed Potter did not stay away from work for long. He was persuaded to continue on as a consultant for Aetna and edited a newsletter for another insurance company.

Ed Potter had a curious mind and “the urge to learn something about everything.” He loved big band and classical music. “However,” he noted in his 50th reunion yearbook, “no musical group to which I have belonged since college has demanded the discipline and given such satisfaction as the Hamilton College Choir and the Hamilton College Octet.” He also enjoyed writing, from poetry to training manuals; studied geology; sculpted marble; and painted with oils. In addition, he volunteered in a sixth-grade classroom, helping with English composition workshops.

Edward E. Potter died on Nov. 22, 2015. He is survived by his wife, three children from a previous marriage and two grandchildren.
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Merrill Jenks King, Jr. ’46

Merrill Jenks King, Jr. ’46, an ophthalmologist and career military man, was born on Jan. 28, 1925, in Willoughby, Ohio, the son of Merrill J. King, an ophthalmologist, and the former Dorothy Bell. The young Merrill King graduated in 1942 from the Noble & Greenough School in Dedham, Mass., into a country and world at war. He enlisted in the Navy that same year while also entering Hamilton, where he would focus his studies on biology, chemistry and math. After one academic year he left College Hill to attend Navy V-12 officers’ training, then entered the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. Merrill King served in the South Pacific on the USS South Dakota, and when the war ended he was stationed on the USS Whitewood to take part in “Operation Nanook,” a survey of Arctic and Greenland.

He pivoted back into College life in 1946. A course in political science of the Near East was particularly meaningful to him. “My maternal grandfather was a medical officer in the British Army, who served at Gallipoli, in Palestine, Syria, Iraq and finally in Egypt where he died and is still buried,” wrote Merrill King, who was a member of Alpha Delta Phi and involved with radio station WHC. His fondest College memories included driving backward up College Hill in an old Model T Ford owned by one of his fraternity brothers. Pointed forward, the car with the gravity-feed fuel system couldn’t always make it to the top.

After graduating in 1948 with Phi Beta Kappa honors, Merrill King pursued graduate studies in oceanography at the University of Oslo, in Norway, before attending Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1952. He completed his ophthalmological residency at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. He and his ophthalmologist father, who had moved to Rockland, Maine, launched a joint practice associated with Knox Hospital. For some 13 years he was in private practice until becoming chief of ophthalmology at the Togus VA Hospital in Augusta, Maine, a position he held until 1991.

Dr. King stayed involved with the military for much of his adult life. He did commissioned service in the U.S. Naval Reserves from 1945 to 1946 and transferred to its medical corps in 1951. In 1978, he reentered the military in the Maine National Guard as a command surgeon, with occasional duty in the field, and eventually state surgeon. He often described his time spent at the guard’s training center, Camp Keyes, as among his best years.

Merrill King’s family life was full. He married twice, outliving both his spouses and raising a blended family of five children. His first wife, Thelma, died in 1969. In 1970, he married Martha Jane Bromley, a widow with three children of her own. She died in 2013. Merrill King’s interests included gunsmithing, jewelry making, single-malt scotch, Gregorian chant and the National Review. He spoke several languages and wore a McGregor tartan kilt on special occasions. He was said to have read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica more than once, alerting its staff to errors he spotted within its thousands upon thousands of pages.

In his later years, Merrill King converted to Roman Catholicism. He was a member of the Appalachian Mountain rescue team in the White Mountains and served on the Rockport school committee from 1954 to 1965. Organizations he took part in included the Governor’s Committee on Hunting Safety, New England Ophthalmological Society, Aesculapian Society, American Ordnance Association, Clan McGregor Society, National Rifle Association, U.S. Naval Institute and the U.S. Marine Corps Association.

Merrill J. King, Jr., whose family described him as a “brilliantly quirky polymath; sometimes difficult, sometimes charming,” died on Aug. 5, 2015, at the Knox Center for Long Term Care in Rockland. Survivors include a daughter and a son from his first marriage; two stepdaughters and a stepson from his second marriage; and six grandchildren.
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Robert Graves Knapp, Jr. ’46

Robert Graves Knapp, Jr. ’46, a retired oral surgeon and fifth-generation doctor, was born in Buffalo, N.Y., on Aug. 7, 1925, the son of Dr. Robert G. Knapp, Sr. and the former Marion K. Farr. When he was a child, his family moved to the Mohawk Valley, and following his graduation from Whitesboro High School, he enrolled at nearby Hamilton at the age of 16. After spending his first few months on the Hill enjoying himself a bit too much, he pledged Psi Upsilon and “came under the steading influence of upperclassmen” who encouraged him to focus on his studies. Their assistance was successful; he proceeded to squeeze two years of pre-med studies into 18 months.

In March of 1944, Bob Knapp was drafted into the Army and spent time at Camp Grant in Illinois with a medical training battalion before sailing across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary. The Army Specialized Training Program, which was to send him to dental school, was eliminated a week before he entered, so he transitioned to Infantry Officer Candidate School in France. He graduated two weeks after the war ended and spent the next two years in the occupation Army in Germany where he was “daily using the German learned at Hamilton.”

Bob Knapp returned to the States to follow in his father’s footsteps by attending the University of Buffalo Dental School, where he earned his D.D.S. in 1949. From there he moved east to receive training in oral and maxillofacial surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston City Hospital. This prepared him to return to the Utica area and enter into a partnership with his father that lasted 19 years. In 1959, he was elected president of the fifth district of the New York State Dental Society. He also served on a committee of the Utica Dental Society that studied the advantages of treating the city’s water supply with fluorine to strengthen tooth enamel and reduce decay. He spent the next 18 years in Utica practicing independently and on the staff of Faxton Hospital, St. Luke’s Hospital and St. Elizabeth Medical Center. During those years he had regular contact with many Hamilton alumni colleagues, among them Harold Heintz ’46, Hiram “Bud” Van Deusen ’41 and Fel Davies ’41.

Bob Knapp retired to Florida in 1986 and married Bonnie M. Telesky the following year. They spent many happy years in the Sunshine State where Bob enjoyed golf, boating, bowling and playing cards. He also used his hands for much less delicate work than oral surgery, remodeling many houses over the years.

Robert G. Knapp died at his son’s home in Vero Beach, Fla., on April 13, 2015. Surviving are two sons, a stepdaughter, six grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. Besides Bonnie, he was pre-deceased by JoEd Morgan, whom he had married on Sept. 2, 1944, and a daughter.
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Kalixt Stephen Synakowski, Jr. ’46

Kalixt Stephen Synakowski, Jr. ’46, an educator and philosopher, was born on Aug. 4, 1924, on Long Island and attended Riverhead (N.Y.) High School. His parents, Kalixt S. Synakowski and the former Mary Mack, were immigrants from Poland. An excellent student and dedicated musician, he joined the Army soon after high school and was to be trained as a meteorologist when health issues forced him to accept an honorable discharge. That change in plans led him to Hamilton where, as described in The Hamiltonian, his “all-consuming thirst for know-why sometimes drove him to bewailing the necessity of burning the midnight oil attendant to the pursuit of six or seven courses at a time.”

Kal Synakowski’s early church life sparked a lifelong interest in philosophical questions, and he pursued that area of study on College Hill. A member of Chi Psi, he also lent his skills to the band, choir, Student Council, for which he served as chairman his junior year, and the football team. Following his graduation with Phi Beta Kappa honors, he headed to Harvard University. While in Boston he met an -artist from Vermont, Alma -Gaylord, who would soon become his wife.

After receiving his master’s degree, Kal Synakowski returned with his family to the Mohawk Valley. He taught briefly at Hamilton before joining the faculty of Utica College, where he remained until his retirement. In 1976, the college honored him with its Distinguished Teaching Award. Professor Synakowski remained close to his alma mater as well, serving as research counsel to Hamilton’s Faculty Committee on Studies in the early 1950s when the College was investigating plans to increase the size of the student body and the faculty, as well as add several buildings. He coauthored with Hamilton President Robert McEwen the article “Planning College Enrollment for Academic Efficiency” that appeared in the June 1954 Journal of Higher Education.

Although known by many for his time in the classroom, Kal Synakowski was equally at home in the outdoors. According to his family, he enjoyed time spent at the family’s summer place on the St. Lawrence River, where he would invite friends and family onto his boat to troll for lunker pike or that rare muskie. He also was a model train enthusiast.

Kalixt S. Synakowski, Jr. died on Dec. 29, 2015. Predeceased by his wife, he is survived by a daughter, three sons, six grandchildren and two step-grandchildren.
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Norman Leonard Hoberman ’48

Norman Leonard Hoberman ’48, an architect who once won a commission to design a major memorial in Washington, D.C., was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on July 10, 1928, the son of Louis G. and Lena Ginsburg Hoberman. His childhood, he said in a short biography on his website, was uneventful. After graduating from Hamilton with Phi Beta Kappa honors, he went on “with much ambivalence” to Harvard Law School. Ambivalent or not, he did well, working on the Law Review despite having “no sense of calling.” In 1951, the year he graduated from law school, he married Mary Ann Freedman, who became an award-winning author of a children’s book. In 1957, the couple published All My Shoes Come in Twos written by Mary Ann and illustrated by her husband.

Law was not Norman Hoberman’s calling. He served in the U.S. Air Force for two years, during the Korean War, including a year as a judge advocate in Newfoundland. He returned to study architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and earned his degree in 1957. After a brief stint in New York City working for Harrison & Abramovitz, a fellowship took him and his family, which at that point included three children, to Europe. He designed a house in Biot, France, and had a sculpture studio in Rome.

It was then back to the States and a job with a small architectural firm working alongside his architecture school classmate Joseph Wasserman. It would be a fruitful partnership. The duo collaborated to enter a national competition to design a monument for President Franklin D. Roosevelt to be built in Washington, D.C. Their design was selected in 1960 from among nearly 600 entries. The $50,000 prize went to the collaboration that consisted of the firm Pederson and Tilney, associates Joseph Wasserman and David Beer, and sculptor Norman Hoberman, according to a 1995 article in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. But the abstract design fueled controversy and was never to be built. It consisted of eight large concrete slabs inscribed with quotes from the president’s speeches. The concrete tablets, one of which was 167 feet high, were on raised platforms and set at angles from each other. Ada Louis Huxtable, an architecture critic for The New York Times, reportedly called the winning approach “a sensitive and contemporary response to awesome artistic and social challenges.” But a commission failed to approve the design, and the Roosevelt family was divided about both the design and having a monument, according to the article.

Norman Hoberman moved on with his various career interests. In 1961, he started a firm in New York City with Joseph Wasserman, and they practiced for 15 years. Later he created a firm with John Gallagher and chaired the Greenwich planning and zoning commission in the 1970s and 1980s. He and John Gallagher created the design for the town’s public housing for the elderly. Even while Norman Hoberman practiced architecture and took on other interests, he continued to paint, sculpt and work in other media. On a trip to China in 1982, he was so impressed by early Neolithic ceramics that, when he returned, he took a studio arts course and built a kiln. He took up working with wood, making stick assemblages using repetitive elements without glue. Later he began a series of wood sculptures, cutting boards into segments and reassembling them into curved forms using a biscuit jointer. In 2006, he started to develop a process for using three-dimensional scans to make portrait heads and busts using a CNC router. A 2010 story in the Greenwich Time (Conn.) newspaper credited him with creating “a whole new genre of art” when he devised that method. He began with self portraits and went on to create busts of his family. He won numerous honors over the years, including the Best in Show for sculpture at the 1997 Art of the Northeast USA Exhibition and a Greenwich Arts Council Award in 1975.

Norman L. Hoberman died on July 4, 2015, in Stamford, Conn., as a result of complications from a fall. Survivors include his wife, two daughters, two sons and six grandchildren.
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Joseph Constantine Raho ’48

Joseph Constantine Raho ’48, a manufacturer and company president, was born on Aug. 15, 1925, in New York City. The son of Peter S. Raho, a chemical distributor, and the former Rachel M. Laraja, he grew up in Manhattan and attended high school for three years at Townsend Harris Hall before a year of study at the College of the City of New York. With the start of World War II, he entered the U.S. Navy, serving until 1945. After his discharge, Joe Raho entered Hamilton, where he would earn department honors in economics. He was vice president of Delta Epsilon and active with the Newman Club and the radio station, WHC, as chief engineer. He majored in economics and Spanish, graduating summa cum laude.

Post-college, Joe Raho attended graduate school at Columbia University, focusing on inter-national trade. In 1949, he joined his brother in a business involved in chemical trade and eventually became president of the firm. On October 2 of that year, he married Filomena M. Claps in Montclair, N.J.

In 1960, Joe Raho joined Torre Products Co., Inc., a manufacturer of flavoring extracts and essential oils based in New York City. He ultimately served as president of the firm and remained there until his retirement in 1996. A religious man, he was active in his parish at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, where he was a 1998 recipient of the Jubilee Medal Pro Meritis awarded for distinguished service within the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J.

Joseph C. Raho died on Jan. 25, 2016. In addition to his wife, he is survived by three sons, seven grandchildren and two great-granddaughters.
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William Leslie Crew ’49

William Leslie Crew ’49, who carved out a long career in the automotive industry, was born on Dec. 2, 1923, in Brooklyn, N.Y. The son of George W. Crew, a banker, and the former Winifred A. Stevens, he prepared for college at Andrew Jackson High School in Queens. Prior to entering Hamilton, Bill Crew worked for Bell Telephone in New York City and served in the Army Air Corps after the start of World War II. During pilot training, he faced two near-death experiences but managed to parachute out of a cockpit in the first encounter and escape a burning plane in the second. In June of 1945, Bill Crew met and married MaryLee Dacus, whom he had met several months earlier at a Valentine’s Dance at her alma mater, West Texas State College.

Discharged as a second lieutenant at the war’s end, Bill Crew matriculated at Hamilton and took up residence on College Hill with his young bride. He joined Sigma Phi and became a class officer and chairman of the Honor Court. Also a leader on the field of play, he lent his athletic prowess to the baseball, football and ice hockey teams, serving as captain of the latter.

After graduation, having focused his studies in anthropology and geology, Bill Crew became an English teacher and coach at Mohawk Valley Technical Institute, now Mohawk Valley Community College, in Utica, N.Y. In 1954, he opted to change career paths and joined the automotive industry. He and his family, which by now included 2-year-old daughter Mava, moved to California, where he began work at Bendix Corp. as a sales representative. After seven years, he received a job offer from Ford Motor Co., where he specialized in sales and marketing, working in a variety of managerial capacities for over two decades in California, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas and Washington.

Bill Crew declared early retirement from Ford and, in 1983, assumed the role of vice president at the Japanese-owned company Calsonic, which produces air-conditioning equipment for cars in Tennessee and Irvine, Calif. He traveled to Japan several times on business trips and became executive vice president of operations for Calsonic Climate Control, Inc., as well as a member of the board of directors of Calsonic International.

When not hard at work, the Crews enjoyed traveling, golfing, fishing and spending time in Washington with their daughter and grandsons. William L. Crew died on June 17, 2015. In addition to MaryLee, he was predeceased by two sisters and a brother. He is survived by his daughter, three grandsons and many nieces and nephews.
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George Alfred Fosdick, Jr. ’49

George Alfred Fosdick, Jr. ’49, who pursued two professional passions: music and the research and development of wind technology, was born on May 20, 1928, in Miami to George and Esther O’Neill Fosdick. Music was integral to his life early on. He grew up in New York City, and as a student at the Cathedral School of St. John The Divine, he was a soloist in the boy’s choir. He also sang in the choir at Hamilton, where he studied English literature and history. Among his favorite college memories was a Model T Ford touring car that he and a buddy pitched in to buy for $60.

Shortly after graduating from Hamilton, George Fosdick spent a dozen or so years working in the aircraft instrument industry, first as a technical writer and then as an engineer at Kollsman Aircraft, in Queens, N.Y. During this time he met Cecelia Truskolaski, and the two were married on Dec. 3, 1961.

An accomplished musician, George Fosdick sang professionally for more than 30 years in a number of New York City church choirs and later with choirs on Long Island. A baritone, he performed as a soloist for six years with New York City’s Down Town Glee Club, including several concerts at Carnegie Hall. He also sang with the choir at St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Rocky Hill, Conn., where he and his wife were members. A composer, he wrote music that was performed at university concerts, graduations, weddings and church services. He created organ and choral pieces, popular tunes and songs for his children and grandchildren. In 1964 or 1965, he turned toward music as a career: He got into the retail piano and organ business, leaving Kollsman to open a store in the Walt Whitman Mall in Huntington, N.Y. He would open four more stores on Long Island.

George Fosdick was ever the inventor, his family says. He used his engineering skills to develop high-torque wind turbines and was awarded two patents for his designs. At one point he was building a prototype windmill at Stony Brook University for the town of Brookhaven, N.Y., and he received a federal Department of Energy grant to develop wind-power devices in conjunction with Suffolk County Community College’s science and engineering departments. In his 50th reunion yearbook, George Fosdick spoke of his alma mater’s influence on his varied life: “At Hamilton I learned that I could pursue, nurture and develop many diverse interests by remembering the motto, ‘Know Thyself,’ thereby enriching my life and the lives of my family and friends.”

George A. Fosdick, Jr., whose family members will miss his music, counsel and “resolute conservatism,” died on Jan. 5, 2016. He had been residing in Middletown, Conn. Survivors include his wife, three sons and four grandchildren.
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