Amos W. Shepard Jr. ’40, an antiquarian who specialized in English lighting fixtures, died on August 31, 2009, in Middletown, Connecticut after a prolonged illness.

He was born on April 1, 1916, in Springfield, Mass., and prepared for college at Winchester (Mass.) High School and Hebron Academy. At Bowdoin, he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and sang in the Glee Club. He piloted an F-17 in the 457th Bomb Group of the Army Air Force during World War II. He parachuted to safety when his plane was shot down over Gydnia, Poland, on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1944, but he remained a German prisoner of war until the war ended. He attained the rank of lieutenant. After a brief time in California, he relocated to New York City, attended the Pratt Institute, and spent the 1950s and ’60s running a Madison Avenue antiques shop with business partner Lloyd Hyde. Their clientele included the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, the White House, and the State Department. For three decades after that, he and his partner, James R. Wynn, operated the Parsnip Hollow Gift Shop, noted for exclusive silk gowns from Thailand, oil paintings from Bali, and a wide assortment of Oriental jewelry. He served numerous local organizations, including the planning and zoning commission, Goodspeed Opera House Foundation, East Haddam Land Trust and Rathbun Library and Historical Society.