Alumni Notes

Losses John C. Kennedy '26 College Administrator John Kennedy had served as assistant director of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and then registrar of the College, for 30-plus years when he and his wife, Miriam Peabody Kennedy '31, broke the age barrier and joined the Peace Corps. They spent two happy years in the Philippines, teaching English and building compost piles throughout the islands.

On their return to the U.S. in the 1960s, Mr. Kennedy began a second career as vice president at the New England Conservatory of Music before retiring in 1980 to Ithaca, N.Y. In the 1950s, before it became fashionable, he insisted on the importance of unrefined foods and ground his own wheat flour in an ancient coffee grinder to make bread. He built a compost pile in his basement and wanted his beautifully crafted home to be an "anti-nuclear statement." Among his passions were children, trees, raspberries, fine tools, the Romantic poets, and his longtime friends. He and his wife, who died in 1991, were members of the Society of Friends and were longtime supporters of the American Friends Service Committee. Mr. Kennedy died of a heart attack August 23, 2002, at the age of 98, leaving his two daughters, Rosalind Kenworthy '56 and Emily Kennedy '62; a sister; a granddaughter; and two great-grandchildren.

 

back to top