1940s
Thomas Algier Carpenter ’42
Thomas Algier Carpenter ’42, a 35-year veteran of the classroom and known for his great affection for animals and birds, was born on Oct. 5, 1918, in Utica, NY. A son of Stephen S. R., Sr., a sales representative, and Margaret Cavanaugh Carpenter, he grew up in Utica and was graduated in 1937 from Utica Free Academy. Tom Carpenter came up to College Hill the following year. He sang in the Choir, participated in Charlatans productions and was active in the Newman Club. Known on the Hill for his “light and agile feet” as a talented tap dancer, he also had a particular flair for biology and aspired to a career in medicine. A member of the Squires Club, he left the Hill with his diploma in 1942.
That fall, Tom Carpenter enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He served for three years in the Hospital Corps as a pharmacist’s mate during World War II. The experience prompted him to conclude that the practice of medicine was not for him, and he asked to be transferred to regular duty. By that time the war had ended, and he was assigned to a submarine tender bound for occupied Japan.
Discharged from the Navy in April 1946, Tom Carpenter gave thought to heading to New York City and trying his luck in the theater. Instead, he was unexpectedly given the opportunity to teach Latin and later English at Port Leyden Central School, in Port Leyden, north of Utica. While teaching, he attended summer sessions at the State University of New York College at Oswego, which led to an M.S. degree in education in 1951. The previous year he had left Port Leyden and was teaching English at the Episcopal Academy, outside of Philadelphia.
In 1956, Tom Carpenter returned to Port Leyden to reside while taking up a teaching post at Boonville Central School in nearby Boonville. He continued to teach English at the school until his retirement in 1981. Three years later, he moved to Bend, OR, where his elder son resided, and lived out the remainder of his life there.
Over the years, Tom Carpenter had participated as an actor in community theater and enjoyed skiing and hiking. He also bred prize-winning beagles. In addition, his house was reportedly “always filled with birds,” and many people are said to now own the descendants of the finches he had bred. Fittingly, he became a faithful communicant of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Bend. His other hobbies included horticulture and tropical fish, as well as travel. In retirement he grasped the opportunity to go abroad and visit the Holy Land in addition to Europe, where he attended the Passion Play at Oberammergau on more than one occasion.
Remembered for the smile on his face and his outgoing nature, Thomas A. Carpenter, an ardently devoted Hamiltonian, died in Bend on Feb. 24, 2013, at the age of 94. His marriage to Nancy Littell Bonter, on Dec. 23, 1948, in Cambridge, NY, ended in divorce in 1959. He is survived by two sons, Samuel S. and Stephen C. Carpenter; a stepson, Robert Bonter; and two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Armin Christeler ’42
Armin Christeler ’42, a retired dairy and milk plant inspector, was born on June 22, 1914, in the mountain village of Lenk in the canton of Bern, Switzerland. A son of a carpenter and farmer, also named Armin, he immigrated with his family to the United States when he was 8 years old. The family settled in Deansboro, not far from College Hill, and he entered Hamilton in 1938 from Waterville Central School, where he had been class salutatorian.
Armin “Chris” Christeler left the College in the spring of his freshman year and moved to Seattle, WA, where he worked for a dairy prior to serving as a medic in the U.S. Army in France and Belgium during World War II. He subsequently obtained a degree in public health from Washington State College (now University), which led to his career as a dairy and milk plant inspector in California, regularly visiting dairies in Marin and Sonoma counties.
With his wife of 50 years, Elizabeth (Betty), Chris Christeler enjoyed backpacking and hiking, and tending to his apple and chestnut orchards. They also impressed friends with their wood carvings.
Armin Christeler died in Santa Rosa, CA, on March 2, 2012, in his 98th year. Predeceased by his wife, he was survived by a sister, Katherine Kirchner.
Gerald William Lattin ’43
Gerald William Lattin ’43, a longtime educational leader in the hospitality industry and founding dean of the School of Hospitality Management at Florida International University, grew up southwest of Ithaca, NY, in Odessa, where he was born on Jan. 25, 1921. The only child of Harry J. Lattin, an electrician, and the former Della Drake, a beautician, “Gerry” Lattin was graduated in 1939 as class valedictorian from Odessa High School, where he had captained the baseball and basketball teams. Along with his cousin, Edwin F. Lattin, he entered Hamilton that fall and joined Tau Kappa Epsilon. On the Hill Gerry Lattin continued to play baseball and basketball, as well as soccer, acquiring letters in those sports. Having majored in mathematics, he was awarded his B.S. degree in 1943.
Immediately thereafter, Gerry Lattin entered the U.S. Navy. Newly commissioned as an ensign following Midshipman School at Notre Dame University, he was married in its chapel to Utica native Genevieve (Jean) Lasek, an ensign in the Naval Nurse Corps, on Sept. 22, 1943. They had first met on Hamilton’s campus in 1941 when she was a nurse at the College Infirmary. Initially assigned to command a patrol boat on anti-submarine duty in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, Ensign Lattin later chased enemy submarines in the North Atlantic during World War II. Released as a lieutenant (j.g.) in 1946, after the war’s end, he began graduate study at Cornell University, where he acquired an M.S. in education in 1948 and a Ph.D. in psychology in 1949.
Dr. Lattin stayed on at Cornell and joined the faculty of its School of Hotel Administration as an assistant professor. Promoted to full professor, he served as assistant dean of the school from 1962 until 1971, when he became dean of the School of Hospitality Management at the newly established Florida International University in Miami. During his 11-year tenure in that post, he succeeded in elevating the new school to a prominent position in that specialized educational field. Appointed dean of the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management at the University of Houston in 1982, he retained that position until his retirement in 1986.
The author of many articles in professional and trade journals, Gerald Lattin became widely known nationally within his field as a result of his pioneering book, Modern Hotel Management (1958), and his introductory textbook, The Lodging and Food Service Industry, the seventh edition of which was published in 2009. Already recognized early in his career as one of the most knowledgeable men in the field of education for hotel administration, he was credited with playing a major role in the professionalization of the hospitality and food service industry. A onetime president of the Council of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education, he was the recipient of numerous professional awards for lifetime achievement in his field.
An ardent sports fan, Dr. Lattin closely followed the fortunes of his favorite teams, the New York Yankees in baseball and Notre Dame in football. A man of deep faith, he had served as eucharistic minister in his Roman Catholic church. He was also greatly devoted to his family, and especially to Jean, his wife of almost 70 years.
Gerald W. Lattin, a faithful Hamiltonian and at one time president of the South Central New York Alumni Association, was still residing in the Houston area when he died in his sleep on April 16, 2013, at the age of 92. In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Thomas W. and James E. Lattin ’71; a daughter, MaryAnn Lattin; and five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. A scholarship fund is being established at Florida International University in Dr. Lattin’s memory.
Henry Benedict Nesbitt ’43
Henry Benedict Nesbitt ’43, a longtime lawyer and community leader in his native Palmyra, NY, was born in that village southeast of Rochester on Feb. 3, 1921. The younger son of Clarence C. Nesbitt, a physician and surgeon, and the former Doris M. Smith, a schoolteacher, “Hank” Nesbitt entered Hamilton from Palmyra High School in 1939, already intending to pursue a career in the law. He went out for football and track but focused his athletic activities primarily on fencing, with the sabre as his chosen blade. A member of Delta Upsilon, he would remain a stalwart fraternity supporter for the rest of his life. His graduation accelerated because of World War II, he acquired his B.S. degree in January 1943 and soon went on active duty with the U.S. Navy, having enlisted the year before.
Commissioned as an ensign, Hank Nesbitt was trained in amphibious warfare and served as a navigation officer, executive officer and ultimately commanding officer of an assault gunboat in action in the South Pacific during the war. Released with the rank of lieutenant in 1946, after the war’s end, he enrolled in law school at Cornell University, where he obtained his LL.B. degree in 1949. Married on May 19, 1951, to Jane M. Free in Garden City, NY, he had barely established his law practice in his hometown of Palmyra when he was recalled by the Navy to active duty during the Korean War. Again in uniform from 1951 to 1952, he utilized his new legal training to serve as trial counsel in courts martial cases.
In addition to his general practice of law, Hank Nesbitt served as an estate tax attorney for New York State and as attorney for the Village of Palmyra and the Palmyra-Macedon Central School District. He later also served as attorney for several neighboring towns and villages as well as justice of the peace and police justice of the Village and Town of Palmyra. Active in the Republican Party, he chaired the Palmyra Republican Committee and was a member of the Wayne County Republican Executive Committee as well as the New York State Republican Committee.
Hank Nesbitt, a past president of the Wayne County Bar Association, retired from his law practice in 1995. Throughout his career he was also an active participant in civic affairs. Among the posts he held were president of the Palmyra Community Chest, a trustee of the Wayne County Historical Society and a director of the Wayne County Association for Retarded Children. In addition, he was a former member of the vestry of Zion Episcopal Church. An enthusiastic sailor who found summer pleasure in skippering a sailboat on Lake Ontario, he was a past commodore of the Sodus Bay Yacht Club as well as president of the Sodus Bay Junior Sailing Association, a group dedicated to teaching children swimming and boating skills.
Henry B. Nesbitt was still residing in Palmyra when he died on April 9, 2013, at the age of 92. Predeceased by his wife Jane in 1980, he is survived by three sons, John B., Stephen L. and Henry B. Nesbitt II; a daughter, Anne L. Nesbitt; and seven grandchildren.
James Thomas Rhind ’44
James Thomas Rhind ’44, long a prominent Chicago, attorney and educational and cultural benefactor, and a life trustee of the College, was born in Chicago on July 21, 1922. The middle son of the Rev. John Gray Rhind and the former Eleanor Bradley, he grew up in Covington, KY, where his father, who formerly taught sociology and religion at Lake Forest College in the Chicago suburbs, was minister of the First Presbyterian Church. Following his graduation in 1939 from Holmes High School in Covington, “Jim” Rhind, encouraged by his father, found employment for a year with the Cincinnati branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland to earn money before going on to college. Already determined as a teenager on a future career in the law, he was enabled to enter Hamilton for his college preparation when a scholarship was proffered.
Jim Rhind came to College Hill in 1940, joined Sigma Phi and participated in sports, earning a letter in football. After two years on the Hill, he joined the U.S. Army Reserve and transferred to Ohio State University, where he spent less than a year before entering military service during World War II. Assigned by the Army to study Japanese at the University of Michigan, he served in military intelligence during the war. Discharged as a corporal in 1946, after the war’s end, he stayed on for a year in Tokyo as a civilian translator of Japanese, working for the U.S. Department of War.
In 1944, Jim Rhind, having majored in history and achieving election to Phi Beta Kappa, obtained a B.A. degree in an accelerated wartime program at Ohio State. He enrolled at Harvard Law School in 1947 and acquired his LL.B degree cum laude in 1950. While at Harvard, he met his future wife, Laura H. Campbell, who was working for the Law School’s dean at the time. They were married in Adrian, MI, on April 19, 1958.
After Harvard, Jim Rhind returned to his native Chicago, where he joined the large and prestigious law firm of Bell, Boyd & Lloyd. Except for the year 1953-54, when he was employed in Washington, DC, during the Eisenhower era, as congressional liaison for the State Department’s Foreign Operations Administration, he spent his entire 60-year career with Bell, Boyd & Lloyd. Chairman of its executive committee from 1976 to 1986, and for seven of those years its managing partner, he became of counsel in 1993 and retired fully in 2009.
Throughout his career as an attorney specializing in corporate and business law, Jim Rhind also took an active role in the community and his church. A onetime chairman of the Cook County Young Republican organization and a Young Republican national committeeman, he also served on the board of governors of the United Republican Fund of Illinois. An elder of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, he was a former commissioner of the United Presbyterian Church’s General Assembly and a member of the executive committee, Division of Metropolitan Mission and Church Extension, of the Chicago Presbytery. His other volunteer activities included serving on the board of the E.J. Dalton Youth Center and as a trustee for many years as well as past president of the Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society.
However, Jim Rhind, along with his wife, Laura, was particularly active in promoting the arts, and especially music, and they took a prominent role in organizations dedicated to their fostering. A former member of the Arts Council of the State of Illinois, Jim also served as a governing member of the Orchestra Association of Chicago, overseer of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and a trustee and vice chair of the Ravinia Festival Association, which operates one of the country’s most successful and respected summer programs for the performing arts.
In the field of education, Jim Rhind was a trustee emeritus of the University of Chicago, having served on its board since 1976 and as its vice chair from 1984 to 1992. Also having chaired many of the board’s ad hoc committees, he spearheaded efforts to strengthen the university’s institutional governance. In addition, he had chaired the visiting committee of the university’s law school and was for more than 20 years a trustee of its medical center.
Jim Rhind also found time to devote his abundant energies to Hamilton. Always remembering with fondness the two years he had spent on the Hill, he began to reconnect with the College while attending the 20th reunion of his class in 1964. Elected a charter trustee in 1975, he was vice chair of the board from 1980 to 1990. He also chaired the College’s Committee on Planned Giving, and his wise counsel and sage advice contributed importantly to the development and success of that program. In addition, he was a member of Hamilton’s Performing Arts Advisory Committee and, with his wife, established the James T. and Laura C. Rhind Arts Fund in 1979 to support the fine arts and especially musical performances on the Hill. His and Laura’s generous benefactions to the College include the Rhind Family Scholarship as well.
James T. Rhind, long a resident of the Chicago suburb of Glenview, had been combating cancer for more than a year when he died at a local hospice on Jan. 16, 2013, at the age of 90. In addition to his wife of 54 years, he is survived by a daughter, (Anne) Constance Robey; two sons, James C. ’83, husband of Nicole Katz Rhind ’83, and David S. Rhind ’85; and five grandchildren. Jim Rhind’s insightfulness and always gently tendered sagacious advice will be greatly missed on College Hill.
Arnold Frederick Keller, Jr. ’45
Arnold Frederick Keller, Jr. ’45, pastor emeritus of the Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Washington, DC, and a leader in community ministry, was born on May 27, 1924, in Utica, NY. His parents were Arnold F., also a Lutheran minister, and Charlotte Berau Keller. He grew up in Utica, where his father was the pastor of Redeemer Church. Family summers were spent in the Adirondacks. His father, “a stern German disciplinarian with high expectations” of his son, saw that the boy would be well prepared for college by sending him to Mt. Hermon School in Massachusetts. After his graduation in 1941, “Arnie” Keller came home to enroll at Hamilton. He went out for soccer, lettering in the sport, sang in the Choir and played a “mean” saxophone in the Band as well as with the Glen Lane Orchestra. He also served on the Honor Court. To cover expenses, he waited on tables. A member of the Squires Club, he completed his studies during the summer of 1944, at a time when College Hill was virtually a World War II military camp, with the influx of Army personnel training on campus. He received his diploma as one among only eight “civilian” graduates in June 1945. By that time he had already begun his studies at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, preparing to follow his father into the ministry.
After acquiring his M.Div. degree in 1947 and newly ordained, Arnold Keller became assistant pastor at the Church of the Reformation on Capitol Hill in Washington. There he met Margaret E. “Peggy” Schroeder, one of its parishioners, whom he would wed in Washington on April 12, 1950. The couple remained in the nation’s capital until 1953, when Arnold Keller took up a new post as pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Allentown, PA. In that small city he recognized the value of reaching out into the community, and he served as president of the Allentown area’s Council of Churches.
In 1967, Arnold Keller had the opportunity to return to the Church of the Reformation as senior pastor. For 26 years until his retirement in 1993, he focused on community outreach, especially on Capitol Hill, including tutoring youths living in a nearby housing project, setting up a food pantry and a health-care center, and leading efforts to restore the homes of local needy families. More broadly, he led in organizing the church’s public affairs ministry, which brought together hundreds of federal government employees to discuss public and theological issues. His tireless efforts on behalf of the community earned him the Capitol Hill Community Achievement Award in 1991.
The Rev. Dr. Keller (he had received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Muhlenberg College in Allentown in 1964) served as executive director of the Council of Churches of Greater Washington for some four years until his retirement. Throughout his ministry he was known as a man of great faith and dignity but also one of great openness and liberality. He was a peace activist during the Vietnam War and an early supporter within the Lutheran Church of extending a welcome to gay and lesbian worshipers.
In 1997, Arnold F. Keller and his wife relocated from Bethesda, MD, to Vero Beach, FL, where he increasingly combated the challenges of Parkinson’s disease. An ever faithful Hamiltonian, he died of complications from the illness at a nursing home in Vero Beach on Feb. 16, 2013. He is survived by his wife of 63 years. Also surviving are two daughters, Margaret O’Bryon K’75 and Anne Jones; two sons, Arnold F. III and Jonathan R. Keller; and seven grandchildren, including Elizabeth C. O’Bryon ’06, and a sister.
William Kenward Lampman ’46
William Kenward Lampman ’46, a retired business executive, was born on Aug. 2, 1923, to William W. and Geneva Mills Lampman, in Johnson City, NY. He grew up in nearby Binghamton and was graduated in 1941 from Binghamton North High School. He enrolled at Hamilton in the fall of 1942, joined Lambda Chi Alpha and played basketball, but left the College after one semester. With a future as a naval engineer in mind, Bill Lampman obtained appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, where he acquired his B.S. degree in engineering in 1946, just after World War II’s end. His graduation was immediately followed by celebration of his wedding to Elizabeth Griggs Meigs.
As an ensign, Bill Lampman went on active duty with the U.S. Navy. His naval career included sea duty aboard destroyers and assignments to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Having contracted Meniere’s disease, which made continued military service difficult, especially at sea, he left the Navy in 1953 and returned to his hometown of Binghamton. There he began a new career as an engineer with New York State Electric & Gas Corp. He later worked as a power sales engineer and assistant to the vice president of the company. He was assistant vice president of market services when he left NYSEG in 1974 to join Magnetic Laboratories, Inc. He served that company as a senior executive for a decade until his retirement.
Bill Lampman, a successful self-taught investor in the financial markets, was an ardent conservative who “stood ever ready for a spirited debate on political or economic issues.” A dedicated skier and quite adept at the sport, he was known as “a man of great humor, the most loyal of friends.”
William K. Lampman was still residing in the Binghamton area when he died on Jan. 9, 2013. He is survived by a stepson, retired U.S. Army General Montgomery C. Meigs.
