Richard C. Hatch ’50 died on July 16, 2023, in Hillsborough, North Carolina.
(The following was provided by the Spotlight News on July 24, 2023)
Richard C. Hatch formerly of Cary, NC, and Manlius, NY, passed in his sleep Sunday morning July 16 of natural causes. Dick was born in Houlton, Maine, a graduate of Bowdoin College and Columbia University School of Law. Following law school, he served with the US Army in Germany. He is survived by his wife of sixty-one years, Diana, sons Brian (wife Leewyn) and Douglas (wife Tammi), and granddaughters Madison, Megan, and Cassidy.
He had a long career in corporate contract law, starting in maritime, to air transport, and retired from GE’s Electronic Defense Systems. He also volunteered with several CNY organizations including the board that originally started in the 70s on the restoration of the Landmark theater. Retirement only energized his volunteer activities. He very much enjoyed singing in several area choruses and continued to use his legal skills as a member of AARP’s North Carolina State Advocacy Team and an alternate delegate / parliamentarian of the North Carolina Senior Tar Heel Legislature. For over seventeen years as an advocate with AARP, he worked to persuade the North Carolina General Assembly to pass laws improving the state’s regulation of managed care organizations, strengthening laws protecting North Carolina residents from telemarketing fraud and abuse, making certain predatory lending practices unlawful, eliminating the state portion of the sales tax on food purchases, restoring the state income tax credit for long term care insurance premiums, authorizing pay on death registration of securities, establishing a reverse mortgage law, establishing a rating system for adult care homes, and establishing a health care personnel registry with criminal background checks.
He was also a defender working with others to successfully oppose, efforts in the General Assembly to authorize payday lending, to impose a surcharge on the retail sale of prescription drugs, and to convert NC Blue Cross-Blue Shield to a for-profit corporation.
He completed terms as the president and secretary of the NC Coalition on Aging. provided pro-bono legal services in the Wake County Bar Association’s Volunteer Lawyer Program, taught seniors how to use a computer at the Cary Senior Center, and delivered meals on wheels. He was president of Friends of the Cary Senior Center and a former member of the board of directors of Cary Senior Technology Education. In 2003 he received AARP’s Andrus Award for Community Service in North Carolina and in 2017 he received the North Carolina Coalition on Aging’s Pathfinder Award.
He was well loved by all and able to say goodbye to all his immediate family on Saturday afternoon. He was a giving soul and will be missed.