Harry D. Nelson, Jr. ’50 died on June 11, 2020, in Hanover, New Hampshire.

(The following was provided by the Valley News on June 25, 2020:)

Harry D. Nelson, Jr., of Hanover, NH, died on June 11, 2020. He was 91. His wife, Sylvia Allen Nelson, predeceased him in August of 2019. Harry and Sylvia met at Hanover High School and were married in 1953, following Sylvia’s graduation from Vassar College. He received his BA from the University of Vermont, where he majored in history, sang in the Glee Club, and was president of his fraternity.

Subsequently earning an MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College, he embarked on a financial-management career in New York City. After successful stints at Merrill Lynch, Salomon Brothers, and Dean Witter, he found a professional home at Neuberger Berman where, as a general partner, he first managed the institutional sales department and later became a full-time money manager.

One of his strengths as a manager was hiring good people. Among those he hired at Salomon Brothers was Michael Bloomberg, who became mayor of New York. And while at Dean Witter he hired as a consultant Zbigniew Brzezinski, who later became National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter.

Scion of the Hawkins Nine, a renowned Long Island baseball team comprised of five maternal uncles and other relatives, Harry was an accomplished pitcher in high school and college. A deft dancer and natural singer, he possessed a prodigious memory for songs of the Tin Pan Alley era: throughout his life, he would produce unbidden an obscure song, often one featuring a painfully rhymed pun or a stream of cheerful incongruities, and then gleefully erupt in a signature Hawkins-Nelson guffaw. He had a keen appreciation for the comedic, acutely aware that the reverse was tragedy. Indeed, later in life he read much of Shakespeare, as part of a daunting reading regimen that included an abundance of biographies and historical monographs.

Upon his retirement from Wall Street in 1988, Harry and Sylvia returned to Hanover. They lovingly restored Sylvia’s childhood home, preserving its essence while modernizing its interior. They shared an appreciation of colonial furniture, reproductions of which filled their home. Introduced to Oriental rugs in the 1960s, he became a self-taught connoisseur, taking delight in discoveries and purchases of fine carpets from Persia and the Indian subcontinent. He was an aficionado of fine wines. In later years, he and Sylvia cultivated an interest in Asian porcelain antiques.

Harry’s belief in liberal-arts education was deep-seated and abiding. He established endowed scholarships at Vassar, Dartmouth, Tuck School, and the University of Vermont. He and Sylvia served on the boards of the Fleming Museum at UVM and the Children’s Literacy Fund. He keenly supported her work on the boards of Vassar College, the Friends of the Hood Museum, the Friends of Hopkins Center, and the Hanover Historical Society.

Harry often said his proudest achievements were his children, and that the smartest thing he ever did was to marry Sylvia. He savored annual family gatherings on Lake Massawippi in Canada, which also frequently included his sister, Elizabeth, and her children and grandchildren from England. He is survived by Elizabeth, his children Mark, Suzanne, and Kate, and his three grandchildren Andrew, Sally, and Declan.