James Wallace Hand, Jr. ’34 died on October 16, 2007, in Edgecomb, Maine.

Born on November 9, 1911, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, he prepared for college at the Pingry School in Elizabeth. Following his graduation from Bowdoin in 1934, he studied for a year at the Harvard School of Business Administration.

In 1935, he joined the Standard Oil Development Company (now Exxon-Mobil) in Elizabeth as a research chemist.

During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army from 1941 to 1945 as a sergeant in North Africa and Italy.

He was president of the Audubon Society in Summit, N.J., and, from 1959 to 1964, he and his wife Grace played primary roles in the establishment of the Great Swamp as a National Wildlife Refuge, making it the first federally designated wilderness area east of the Mississippi River. He was a founding member of the Great Swamp Committee, which grew to become the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, of which he was a charter member and for which he was both secretary and a trustee.

He retired in 1972 and moved to North Edgecomb in Maine. He held numerous patents relating to aviation engine lubricants.

He was married in 1945 to Grace Campbell, who died in 1993, and he is survived by a sister, Lois Dunn of Hillside, New Jersey, and two nieces, Jane McCarthy Rosenblum of Hillside and Anne McCarthy Forbes of Acton, Massachusetts.