obituaries Samuel N. Hibbard ’54 died November 2, 2012, in Phoenix, of leukemia. He was born in North Adams, Mass., on October 1, 1932, and graduated from Bennington High School as president of the class of 1950. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity and earned an ROTC commission in the Army Transportation Corps., 7822nd Army unit. He was stationed in Munich and served to first lieutenant. He earned an MBA in industrial management from the Wharton Graduate School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1958, followed by a 30-year career in a variety of positions at Norton Company (now St. Gobain) in Worcester, Mass., retiring in 1988. He was a founder and member of the Central Massachusetts Business Group on Health and a founder and member of the Worcester Area Systems for Affordable Health Care. He was a fiveyear member and chair of the Holden (Mass.) School Committee and served three years as a Pownal (Vt.) selectman after retiring to the family farm. He also served as a director of United Way of Bennington County for six years and as a trustee of the Bennington Museum for nine years. A lifelong Rotarian, he was a Paul Harris Fellow. Most recently he had been a voting member of the American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Marietta Laskey Hibbard; daughters Wendy Lee Hibbard and Melinda Newcomb Kruder; and brother Albert Dudley Hibbard. George V. Packard Jr. ’54 died September 6, 2011, in the Canary Islands. He was born on February 14, 1932, in Portland and prepared for college at Garden City (N.J.) High School and Hebron Academy. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and recipient of the Hawthorne Prize for Creative Writing. He earned a master’s degree 84
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from Columbia University in 1959. He enlisted in the Coast Guard as a seaman’s apprentice in 1955 and enrolled in Officer Candidate School in New London, Conn. In 1958, he was awarded a Coast Guard Letter of Commendation for jumping into the ocean during a squall in the dark of night to rescue a drowning man in Florida. A lieutenant junior grade in the Coast Guard Reserve at the time, he was serving as the executive officer of the cutter Travis. That experience was later the subject of one of his two novels, Rescue; the other was That Grail Song, Sam, One More Time. His short fiction has appeared in Redbook, Family Circle, Cavalier, Texas Monthly, Paris Metro, Yankee, and Sports Illustrated, as well as in collections titled Modernity: Satirical Portraits of Modern Age Icons and Shoemaker’s Children and Other Stories. He worked as an English teacher at the Millbrook (N.Y.) School for Boys and Princeton (N.J.) Day School, where he was chair of the English department, before moving to Europe. He spent many years on Sherkin Island off the coast of Ireland, where he worked at everything from salmon fishing to organic vegetable farming. He ran an art gallery for his wife, the painter Kordula Packard. He was the father of son Michael and daughters Leslie, Susan, and Cynthia. His oldest son, Stephen, disappeared while hitchhiking at the age of 18 and was never found. Dexter J. Risedorph ’54 died April 24, 2012, in Amsterdam, N.Y. He was born on September 16, 1932, in Gloversville, N.Y., and graduated from Gloversville High School. After Bowdoin, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity, he earned a master’s degree at Union College in 1961. He taught for five years, first at a junior high school and then a high school. He held several positions in the leather industry, including with his father at Risedorph Tannery, and then became co-owner of Cummings
Leather in Lebanon, N.H., and owner and operator of Sheepskin Lining Incorporated in Gloversville. His work brought him to India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Haiti. He was well-known and admired for his political work. He served twice as Fulton County Republican Committee chairman and won the 1973 Charles Hough Memorial Award as the county’s top Republican. He started the Fulton County Republican Chairman’s Club and served as a Republican commissioner of the county Board of Elections for 12 years. For many years, he wrote election night results on a huge board for the public and the media. He also served as alderman of the Sixth Ward in Gloversville and on the local planning board. He was a member of the Fremont Methodist Church in Gloversville. He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Doris Stead Risedorph; daughters Jamie Lynn Risedorph and Cheryl Lynn Miller; sister Joanne Morgan; half-brother James Risedorph; and half-sister Kimberly Risedorph. Philip S. Day ’55 died November 21, 2012, in Naples, Fla. He was born on October 5, 1933, in Harrisburg, Pa., and prepared for college at Brewer (Maine) High School and John Bapst High School. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, he graduated cum laude from Bowdoin, where he was class president, a member of Psi Upsilon fraternity, and was voted most popular man in his class. He earned a law degree from St. Mary’s University School of Law. He spent five years travelling throughout Europe studying languages and comparative law at the Universities of Heidelberg, Madrid, and the Sorbonne in Paris. He returned to the United States in 1964 and worked for IBM and for the international law firm, Baker and MacKenzie, in Washington, D.C. In 1968 he began his own law practice, retiring in 1993. He is survived by sister Barbara Ann Murphy and brothers
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