Deceased December 13, 2009

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In Memory

My father, Dick Teichgraeber, died quietly in his sleep on December 13, 2009, at the Plaza of The Buckingham, in Houston, Texas.  He was born in Emporia, Kansas in 1921, and graduated from Pelham Memorial High School, Pelham, New York. With strong encouragement from his life-long friend Bob (aka "Slim") Dills '43, he entered Amherst where he majored in economics, played golf, and was Psi Upsilon. Like many other members of his class, Dad graduated a semester early, joined the U.S. Navy and served as a Lieutenant in the Pacific during World War II.

Returning to Pelham in 1946, my father married the love of his life, Jacqueline Flynn. They had more than 54 eventful and mostly happy years together before her death in August, 2000.

In 1947, after a glorious summer together in Glacier National Park, where Dad worked as a Ranger in the National Park Service, my parents returned to New York, and Dad began his professional career in the agribusiness industry. He joined Houston-based Anderson Clayton & Company in 1949. His first major assignment moved him to Sao Paolo, Brazil, to help run the company's cotton and coffee merchandizing operations.  In the summer of 1959, he returned to corporate headquarters, and was corporate vice president at the time of his retirement.  He spent the rest of his life in Houston, most of it in a bright and elegant home not far the thirteenth green of the Houston Country Club.

Dad out-lived his great friend "Slim" by two and one-half years. He is survived by eight grandchildren and two sons.  (My older brother Dr. John F. Teichgraeber (Williams College '70) is Professor in the Department of Pediatric Surgery, at the University of Texas Medical Center, Houston.)   Dad was preceded in death by his sons and my two younger brothers Michael G. Teichgraeber (Amherst '75) and Major William Patrick.

Dad loved that fact that two of his sons joined him in the ranks of Amherst alumni. He was a devoted reader of The Economist magazine and Foreign Affairs quarterly, which he considered the only reliable sources of information about the way the world works. He was a life-long Republican who despised George W. Bush and voted for Barrack Obama.  Dad was a kind, intellectually curious, and wonderfully complicated man. He was also a great father.

Richard F. Teichgraeber '71