Richard O. Card ’54 died on May 7, 2015, in Bath, Maine.(The following appeared online at ObitsforLife.com)
Richard Otis Card, 82, of North Street, Bath, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts, died Thursday, May 7, 2015 at HillHouse Assisted Living.
He was born in Bath on October 31, 1932, a son of Otis Norris Edgar and Mildred (Payne) Card. He attended Bath schools and graduated from Morse High School in the Class of 1950 as Valedictorian. After winning the State of Maine Scholarship from Bowdoin College, he graduated magna cum laude from Bowdoin in 1954, having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. He joined the Solar Lodge, F & A.M. in 1954. From then until 1956 he served as an officer in the Transportation Corps, mainly at Fort Story, Virginia, being honorably discharged as a First Lieutenant. After a summer travelling across Europe, he studied at Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, then started work at The First National Bank of Boston (now BankBoston), from which he took early retirement 33 years later. After serving as a project director in Systems Development, he later became Vice President in Management Information Systems. He also graduated in 1976 from Stonier Graduate School of Banking at Rutgers University. In recent years he has maintained both his primary residence in Boston and the home in which he grew up at 134 North Street, Bath.
He assumed a leadership role in a variety of community and cultural organizations including, Chairman of the Board of Boston Center for the Arts, Founder and three-time President of the South End Historical Society in Boston, then it’s Historian for many years, Chairman of Ward 4 (Boston) Republican Ward Committee for 8 years, Chairman of the Board for the Boston Light Opera, President of the Ellis Neighborhood Association in Boston, Corporator of the Maine Maritime Museum, Board member of the NEARA, Historian, Auditor, and Chairman of Staff-Parish Relations, Bath United Methodist Church, an active member of a number of other organizations, including the Bostonian Society, Victorian Society, SPNEA, Bath Historical Society, Boston Street Railway Association and Boston Preservation Alliance. Richard was chosen one of 350 “Grand Bostonians” at the Boston’s Jubilee 350, in recognition of neighborhood activities and a biography included in Who’s Who in the East 1992-93.
He is survived by his niece, Janice Stevens and her husband Cyril of Bath and friend, Paul A. Ducharme of Framingham. He was predeceased by his brother, Ralph H. Card on November 25, 1995.