John Lee Espy was trained as a chemical engineer, but his calling was teaching. “Dr. Espy was a true gentlemen and a scholar. There are times in an individual's life when you met someone that has a profound impact on you, Dr. Espy was that individual for me,” Terry Roberts writes in the guest book, honoring Espy, who died April 24 in Topeka.

The senior partner at Seham, Seham, Meltz & Petersen, Martin Charles Seham and his firm were known for their experience on both sides of labor-management issues, and demonstrated a commitment to reaching agreements instead of confrontations for clients in the airline and maritime industry.

The Boston Globe reports that John Adams Paine, whose name graces the Harvard Varsity Club Hall of Fame, died on April 30. The college hockey star was captain of the varsity team for the 1942-43 season. After graduating in 1943, Adams Paine joined the Navy and was stationed to an unlikely locale for a winter sportsman: Panama. Later in life, the investment banker and his wife, Jane Patterson, raised two daughters and two sons. After retirement Adams Paine enjoyed golf and curling at the Brookline Country Club.

John Wentworth Peirce came from an old Yankee family, and his lifelong fascination with design and conservation stemmed from deep ties to the New England landscape. He was instrumental in the preservation of large swaths of wilderness in Essex County, on northern coastal Massachusetts; and his architecture firm, Peirce, Pierce and Kramer, designed significant buildings in a modern vernacular.

The third word of the Boston Globe obituary for mathematics Professor George Mackey is “tweed.” An ardent worshipper of the pure aesthetic beauty of mathematics, Mackey embodied much of the ideal of the classic academic.

Julia Thorne was a political wife who hated politics. Married to senator and presidential hopeful John Kerry until 1988, and daughter of the economic minister to Italy, Thorne spent more than 30 years of her life knee deep in the political mud. But politics, she wrote in her 1996 memoir A Change of Heart, led only to “anger, fear, and loneliness,” a loneliness that at times barreled into depression.

For Fred Taylor, a professor emeritus of botany at the University of Vermont who died April 23, it all began with a chore. Growing up working on his grandfather’s farm, he developed a passion for plants and trees that only matured has the years progressed, as the obit in the Brattleboro Reformer reports.

The Chicago Tribune notes the passing of Fredric D. Lake, an eminent Chicago radiologist. An Amherst graduate who was born in Perth Amboy, NJ, Lake attended Harvard Medical School and for thirty years was Chief of Radiology at Columbus Hospital, as well as President of the Illinois State Medical Society from 1974-1975. During World War II he served with the 5th Battalion in Great Britain, North Africa, Italy and Austria, earning the rank of Lt. Colonel and a Bronze Star.

Boston-born, Newton-bred, Howell Eldridge DuPuy Jr. graduated from Harvard College in 1937 and is commemorated by a notice in the Boston Globe. The Globe notes that he was a WWII veteran and officer in the Navy Signal Corp., a 32nd-degree Mason, and the youngest-ever Master of Dalhousie Lodge.

For Robert Ware, a New Mexico native who was 48 when he died April 20 in Michigan, a Harvard education was only the beginning of a passion for education. According to the notice published in the Savannah Morning News, Ware received his bachelor's degree from Harvard, his masters's degree from MIT, his J.D. in international and cyber law from the University of Florida, and his Ph.D. in international business and management from the University of South Carolina. Ware went on to be a professor at the University of Michigan and Savannah State University.

“Old soldiers never die…” From the halls of the White House to a downtown drug recovery center, Michael Fry spent his life trying to be of service to other people. The Milwaukee native, a quietly proud Army veteran, was rarely spotted without his trademark West Point baseball cap. He saw heavy combat in Vietnam, and among his many citations received the Purple Heart for wounds sustained in battle.

A notice in the Boston Globe today noted the passing on April 22 of Christine L. Hobart, a graduate of Radcliffe College. After earning her doctorate from the Harvard Business School, she taught in the Graduate School of Business at Northeastern University until her retirement.

John “Jack” Thomas Poirier cut the dashing figure of a gentleman soldier; his was a life “filled with academics, valor, adventure and love,” according to a notice in the Colorado Springs Gazette. A 1955 graduate of West Point, Poirier earned the Bronze Star for Valor and the Distinguished Flying Cross, among other medals, while serving as a pilot and forward air controller in Vietnam. His assignments as military attaché took him to Venezuela, Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica. He was a professor and the first judo coach at the United States Air Force Academy.

A nationally respected surgeon and teacher who died April 13, Dr. Hugh O. de Fries made groundbreaking contributions to the field of otolaryngology. While serving in the Navy Medical Corps, de Fries developed new reconstructive surgery techniques for Marines who suffered severe head and neck injuries in Vietnam, according to his obituary in the Washington Post. During his tenure at the National Naval Medical Center and later at the John Hopkins School of Medicine, he also pioneered chemotherapy treatments and new surgical techniques for the treatment of head and neck cancers.

During a lifetime of medical practice dedicated to women’s health, Dr. Arthur Tucker cared for many families over two generations, the Boston Globe reported. A 1941 graduate of Harvard Medical School, Tucker completed his residency at The Boston Lying-In Hospital and the Free Hospital for Women, both now merged into Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He established private practices in Brookline and Dedham, Massachusetts, and was appointed to the staff of several Boston-area hospitals. He was also an instructor in obstetrics and gynecology at the Harvard Medical School from 1946-1982. An avid boating enthusiast, Tucker spent much of his time sailing down the coast of Maine and among the Caribbean islands. After raising two daughters, he and his wife, who died a year ago, retired to New Castle, New Hampshire, in 1977.

Timothy Craven, who lost a five-year battle with cancer on April 17, was a mechanical engineer with a passion for welding, cars, motorcycles, and long distance cycling, the Albany Times Union reported. After graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology, Craven began his career with a seven-year stint at General Electric. Taking a break to earn an M.B.A. at Harvard, he then joined Intel Corp., where he became senior planning manager in 2000. In a on-line guestbook, friends recall Craven's drive and leadership, luring them "countless miles" on their biking trips, despite the "painful pace" he set. Despite his illness, he continued to travel with his wife and six-year-old daughter to Mexico, Florida, Hawaii, and Upstate New York, where he was born.

Born into a medical family, Willis Schaupp knew by age 12 that he wanted to be a doctor. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that young “Willie” headed east to Harvard Medical School soon after graduating from Stanford, however New England apparently could not charm him, for he returned to California in 1950.

Hoboken, N.J., native Robert H. Meystre enjoyed a fruitful career in finance, despite having entered the job market in the thick of the Great Depression. In 1933, as a freshly minted Harvard M.B.A., he worked a personal connection to land a credit analyst position at Chase Manhattan Bank. The former journalist quickly expanded his network in the financial sector, and with his wife Ginny and growing family followed jobs to Maryland, Illinois and Rhode Island.

Robert G. Stone, a man who helped shape the modern Harvard, died Tuesday of complications from a stroke, the Harvard Crimson reports. Once deemed “Harvard’s kingmaker,” this world-record breaking rower and World War II veteran chaired the presidential search committee that selected Larry Summers and headed Harvard’s biggest-ever capital campaign.

Stone, a frequent contributor to the university’s financial aid initiatives, was known for inviting students on financial aid to the Faculty Club to share breakfast. And as his hometown Greenwich Time reminds us, in between his Harvard duties, Stone was also an accomplished seaman who served as the commodore of the New York Yacht Club.

In his youth, Richard Fletcher was a hard worker and an accomplished athlete, reported an obituary in the San Mateo County Times of California. He was captain of the Western High School Marching Band for the inaugural parade for President Hoover, and was one of two area scholarship winners to attend Harvard College in the 1930s.

Only days away from the expected due date of her first child, Lindsey Stephenson Brown suffered a brain aneurysm on April 13 and died the next day, according to an obituary in the Dallas Morning News. Brown’s baby, Hudson Stephenson Brown, was delivered by emergency Caesarean section on April 13. Despite a slow heart rate at birth, the baby is doing fine, the paper reported.

J.S. Ewing was born in a small town in Alberta, Canada, where his father was a bank manager, but he traveled to more than a hundred countries before he died January 29, according to the Montreal Gazette.

Charles Veysey, who reigned in an era when department stores were the kings of retail, died April 19, the New York Times reports. Veysey, who earned his Harvard M.B.A. in 1939, served as president of FAO Schwartz and later Frederick Atkins, a firm that handled the marketing and merchandising for dozens of major department stores.

Raleigh's News & Observer contains a notice for David Smillie, who studied philosophy at Harvard in 1962 as a graduate student. Three years before that, he took his wife and two young children to India on a Fulbright research scholarship. In 1969, he joined the faculty of Sarasota's New College and stayed there for 23 years. He loved dancing and jazz, especially Sidney Bechet.

Felicia Stewart was not afraid to take on a fight, especially one as controversial as abortion. The Harvard Medical school graduate and gynecologist, who succumbed to lung cancer on April 13, was a pioneer in the creation of Plan B, otherwise known as the morning after pill, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Joseph Corcoran Dare, a Miami real estate attorney and avid sailor, died April 15, the Miami Herald reported. Dare served in the U.S. Navy from 1959 to 1962 as an ensign and lieutenant junior grade after graduating from Dartmouth College. With an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School and a

Dr. David Calkins, a Kansas City-born physician and medical educator, died last week in Concord, Massachusetts. A 1970 graduate of Princeton who went on to get degrees at Harvard Medical School and the Kennedy School of Government, Dr. Calkins worked as senior associate dean for e

Richard R. Missar, chief executive of DeSoto, died April 13, according to the Chicago Suburban Daily Herald. Missar served with the Marines in the Korean War and earned a degree at the Harvard Business

Theodore Austin was not a man to settle for less. According to a death notice in the New Jersey Star Ledger, he was a provost of Union County College in Cranford and Scotch Plains, N.J., and an associate dean for hospitals at University of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark. A major in the U.S.

A model faculty member, parishoner and “the ultimate Harvard man,” Boston-born John Eric Reissner passed away at the age of 64 on April 15 in Wilmington, North Carolina. A professor emeritus who continued to teach in a phased retirement program until his death, Reissner enjoyed a 30-year career as an inspiring and energetic teacher in the Department of Chemistry and Physics at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, reported the campus newspaper, the Robesonian.

Kenneth Crotty loved to tell the stories of people he encountered in his near century-long life. In an obituary published in the Boston Globe, his daughter says that the gregarious Crotty never wanted a desk job, preferring instead to make a career of writing and reporting.

Fred Jaquith, an insurance executive who had fought with the Army Signal Corps in World War II, died in early April, according to the death notice in the Providence Journal. Jaquith was born in Boston, lived in Warwick, graduated cum laude from Boston College in 1941, and received his M.B.A.

Dr. Alec Danylevich, who died April 14 after a lengthy illness, should have been proud of many things. He was an accomplished neurosurgeon, assistant professor of surgery at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, former chief of neurosurgery at Memorial Hospital in Worcester and most recently chief of neurosurgery at St. Vincent's Hospital at Worcester Medical Center.

Life-long Rhode Island resident William Gerstenblatt, Harvard Law School class of 1936, died on April 15 at Steer House in Providence. According to the Providence Journal, Gerstenblatt attributed his success at Providence College, at Harvard and in life to the educational foundation he received at Classical High School.

Jane Aiken could never turn down a challenge. In spite of contracting polio during her senior year of high school, she graduated first in her class. She then majored in art history at Wellesley and and earned a master’s degree at Columbia in 1962. After marrying and raising three children, she received her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1985 at the age of 47. She taught Renaissance art history at

Medford-born Luther Moore Child, Jr., died April 3 at the age of 95. A graduate of Tufts and Harvard, where he received his M.B.A. in 1934, Child lead a varied career in the printing business, including the launch of his own company, Pine Tree Composition, in 1973. After serving as a mine

A notice in The Oregonian memorializes Sumner Howard Rogers, native Bostonian and graduate of Harvard Law School and Boston Latin. Rogers spent 65 years at the same firm and took a lot of pleasure in

Nicholas C. Polos was a history professor at the University of La Verne, CA, and long time teacher at Clarement High School, as well as the author of nine books and dozens of articles on California history. Polos, who died April 8, 2006 at 89, was a Naval gunner in both World War II and the Korean

Ensuring equal access to education was a life-long priority for English teacher and Massachusetts Department of Education administrator Patricia Pollock Brown, reported the Boston Globe.

Even at the age of 99, Frederick H. Pough was still in love with rocks. The mineralogist and museum curator died of a heart attack last week while attending a mineral symposium near his home in Pittsford, N.Y., the New York Times reports.

Julius Babbitt, who served in the administrations of four Massachusetts governors, died on April 8 due to complications from colon cancer. He was 36. Babbitt, who was director of alumni programs at the Kennedy School at the time of his death, got involved in public service at an early age, as he

An obituary in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes the passing of Stephen E. Gantz, who attended Harvard but was tapped prior to graduation by the US Navy, his employer during WWII. He loved travel and American history, and got his bachelor's and master's degrees in the latter at the University of Pittsburgh.

Remembered as a soft-spoken man with a calm exterior that belied his fierce interior, William “Bill” Woo was admired by fellow journalists and journalism students alike. Woo was born in Shanghai to a Chinese father who was also a newspaper editor, and, after attending the University of Kansas,

Elizabeth McGuire, the nonfiction editor and publisher of Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus, Elizabeth Maguire, died of ovarian cancer April 8, according to the New York Times. In addition to working with prominent writers and intellectuals, including Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cornel West, and cultural critic

An obituary in the New York Times tells the remarkable story of John Williams Whittlesey, a private practice labor law attorney who successfully sued his employer, Union Carbide Corp., for violating a then-recently enacted law against forced retirement and age discrimination.

Max B. Lewis, an attorney who specialized in estate planning, was 88 when he died April 10. Born in Rexburg, Idaho, he went to the University of Utah, where he was a championship debater and, on the lighter side, the national collegiate billiard champion. He completed Harvard Law School in 1947, after an interruption of six years in the Air Force, where he

Paul Taulman Westervelt, who died at 93 on April 10, was a New Orleans financial advisor who served in the Navy during World War II. Born in Oxnard, CA, he graduated from the University of California-Berkeley and Harvard Business School, and was a founding member of Howard, Weil, Labouisse, Freidrichs; a New Orleans-based energy research firm.

Richard Hollis Dennis, who died April 8, gave new meaning to living life to the fullest. As Maine’s Morning Sentinel reports, he not only had a successful career as an ophthalmologist (he was a pioneer in laser surgery and the first doctor to bring laser surgical instruments to his home state of Maine), but was a hobby man as well. The paper explains that he was an avid skier

Dr. Hopkins is remembered in the Tampa Tribune; the Harvard Medical School graduate served in the Army during WWII and with the Naval Reserve Medical Corps during the Korean War. A deeply religious man, he is described in the notice as a "steward of God's bounty." A wife, a sister, a sister-in-law, four children, two nieces, five grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, three stepsons, and nine stepgrandchildren survive him.

A family notice in the Palm Beach Post indicates the passing of Lt. Col. Joseph Arthur Haimes of the US Air Force. Haimes was born in New York and graduated Harvard's Business School, then the Graduate School of Business Administration. He served in the Air Force until 1980.

Barry Bingham Jr., former editor and publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal and one-third of the “corrosive feud” (NYT) that led to the dissolution of the Bingham media empire, died April 3rd from respiratory failure. He was 72.

On Monday, April 3rd, Michael Tsan Ty, 28, was crushed to death in his car when a 10-ton scaffolding fell from a construction site 13 stories overhead. According to the Boston Globe, Ty was still wearing his green hospital scrubs when he fell victim to the freak accident on Boylston St. A native of Atherton, California, Ty earned his B.A. and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa at Johns Hopkins University and graduated from the combined MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology in 2004. At the time of his death he was a neurology resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

In the Los Angeles Times, we find that Wayland T. Leonard died in Santa Ana, California, the father of an adoring family. Mr. Leonard served as an engineer during WWII and went into real estate the year after the war's end, working out of his father's law office.

Attorney Martin Charles “Marty” Seham often took industry leaders into his office at Seham, Seham, Meltz & Petersen, LLP, and showed them a framed picture of early 20th-century children working in coal mines. “That,” he’d say, “is why we need labor unions.”

So strong was Mr. Seham’s commitment to labor unions, particularly those in airline labor, that at the establishment of those unions he often reduced or waived his legal fees, according to a post on the Grey Eagles message board, a site run by retired American Airlines pilots. He served as General Counsel to the Allied Pilots Association, which he played a large role in forming, as well as the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association and the American Maritime Association. The multitalented Seham also did stints as Chairman of the New York City Public Utility Board and as northern New Jersey campaign manager during Hubert Humphrey's failed presidential bid in 1968.

A “Brooklyn boy of modest means,” according to the New York Times, Mr. Seham graduated from Amherst College in 1954 and was second in his class at Harvard Law School, where he was an editor for the Harvard Law Review.

He is survived by his wife, Phoebe, four children, and six grandchildren.