Richard W. Blanchard Sr. ’50

Richard W. Blanchard Sr. ’50 died January 21, 2014, at his home in Winthrop. He was born on October 1, 1926, in Wollaston, Mass., and graduated from Arlington (Mass.) High School, where he played football and hockey and was captain of the baseball team. He then enlisted in the Army Air Forces and, after his discharge, enrolled at Bowdoin, where he played on the varsity ice hockey and baseball teams. He spent six years as a math teacher, hockey and baseball coach, and student advisor at college preparatory schools in Maine and Connecticut, and for fourteen years he worked for RCA participating in the NASA Apollo moon landing program. He moved his family to Maine in 1972 when he went to work as a statistician for the Maine Department of Transportation; he retired in 1991 after eighteen years in that position. He is survived by his wife of sixty-four years, Gladys Hyatt Blanchard; their thirteen children: sons Joseph, Paul, Thomas, John, Richard Jr., Robert, Michael, Andrew, and Daniel, and daughters Mary Sampson, Katherine Hamilton, Janet Blanchard, and Diane Anglin; twenty-five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by all of his eight siblings: brothers Arthur Jr., Edwin, Donald, and Linden, and sisters Doris Limerick, Norma MacDonald, Janet Preston, and Yvonne Schultes.

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