Katharine Salter Pinneo

Katharine Salter Pinneo, longtime Princeton resident, died on March 16, 2019 at Pennswood Village in Newtown, PA, surrounded by family. She was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, on April 16, 1930 to Marion Williams and Thomas Manning Salter, attended Glen Ridge High School, and earned a BA in history from Skidmore College in 1952. Following a MA in education from NYU, Kay worked for the College Board in New York City during which time she met Everard Pinneo, who was then director of admissions at the University of Pittsburgh. She and Ev were married in Bennington, Vermont, on July 7, 1962.

Kay’s professional life centered on healthcare policy. In Princeton, she worked for Planned Parenthood, the Carnegie Foundation, the New Jersey League of Women Voters, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Forums Institute.

In addition to her work advancing matters of equality and social justice, Kay was widely recognized as a talented flower arranger. She served for years on the Trinity Church Altar Guild and received formal training at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Where some saw flower arranging as a hobby that counterbalanced her work, Kay regarded justice and beauty as two sides of the same coin and each an expression of the divine.

To her children she imparted a sense of curiosity and adventure and a willingness to take a wrong turn and get lost. The journey was always more important than the destination.

She is survived by Ev, her husband of 57 years, daughter Nell and grandson Martin of Pau, France and son Tom, grandson Steven, and devoted daughter-in-law Dr. Julie Pantelick of Princeton.

Celebrations of her life will be held at Pennswod Village in Newtown, PA, on Friday, May 10 at 10 a.m. (primarily for residents), Trinity Church in Princeton on Saturday May 11 at 11 a.m., and in Pau, France later in the summer.

Donations may be made to the Princeton Friends School, www.princetonfriendsschool.org, donations email: friends@princetonfriendsschool.org; the Princeton-Blairstown Center, www.princetonblairstown.org; or to a charity of choice.

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Memorial Service

George Cordell Easter
September 8, 1934 — December 18, 2018

A memorial service to celebrate George’s life will be held at 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 13, at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton, 50 Cherry Hill Road. All are welcome at a reception following the service.

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John Little

John Edwin Little, the son and only child of the late Charles E. and Geraldine B. Little, was born on April 2, 1934, in Circleville, Ohio. He died peacefully at home in Lawrenceville, NJ, on March 17, 2019, after a long illness. A graduate of Fairview High School in Dayton, Ohio, John contemplated majoring in chemistry in college but pursued history instead. He received his A.B. cum laude from Harvard University in 1957, and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan and Princeton University. In 1966 he was awarded a Ph.D. in History from Princeton University where he completed a dissertation under the direction of Wesley Frank Craven on “John Adams and American Foreign Affairs, 1775–1780.”

John married Rosemary von Storch Allen in the Princeton University Chapel on October 8, 1966. Carolyn Allen, the bride’s sister, attended the bride, and John’s colleague at the Papers of Woodrow Wilson, David Hirst, served as best man. During their 35 years of marriage the couple traveled the world, visited friends, and enjoyed the companionship of their adopted rescue cats Rudy and Carrie. John was buried in the Princeton Cemetery next to his beloved wife Rosemary, who predeceased him in 2001.

John was an American historian and accomplished editor of historical documents. Working under the direction of project editor Arthur Link, Little participated in collecting and editing The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, a comprehensive edition of Wilson’s correspondence and writings (Princeton University Press, 1966–1992). While continuing to write his dissertation, he joined the Wilson Papers project in 1961 as a “searcher,” charged with going through “seemingly endless boxes” — as John described them — of Wilson materials at the Library of Congress and the National Archives. Offered a full-time job at the project in 1964, he began as an editorial assistant and ended his career with Wilson as an associate editor. What began as a one-year appointment stretched to 34 years. Then, from 1996 until 2015, he was a research associate with The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, contributing to volumes 28–43 of this edition, also published by Princeton University Press.

He was a longtime member of the American Historical Association and belonged to the Association for Documentary Editing. Based on his years at the Wilson Papers, he presented a paper at the 1992 annual meeting of the ADE, “The Work of the Project: An Inside View,” which was published in the June 1993 issue of the association’s journal, Documentary Editing. John had a deep, lifelong interest in classical music, with a particular interest in the works of Gustav Mahler. As a performer, John mastered the French horn, his instrument of choice. He regularly attended performances of the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony (including its summer appearances at Tanglewood), and music festivals in Norfolk, Connecticut, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was an enthusiastic follower of concerts at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. Combining his interest in music and history, he also researched and wrote several entries for the Dictionary of American Biography (Oxford University Press) on nineteenth- and twentieth-century composers, performers, and conductors. Among these are pieces on Antonin Dvorák, Joseph Casimir Hofmann, Vladimir Horowitz, Arnold Schoenberg, and Frederick August Stock. John was a knowledgeable historian and scrupulous textual scholar. As a number of his friends and colleagues observed, John was always “a gentleman and a scholar.”

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Maria Geczy, MD

Born January 8, 1934; passed away peacefully, surrounded by love on March 13, 2019.

Maria Geczy, MD, was a cardiologist, pharmaceutical executive, women’s rights advocate, lifelong intellectual, and beloved mother/grandmother/sister/aunt. She died peacefully March 13, 2019, at Stonebridge retirement community, surrounded by family.

Maria was born in Budapest, Hungary on January 8, 1934, to Lea Szitar and George Geczy. She lived in Budapest until she was 11, when she, her parents, and brother fled Hungary. The family spent six years as refugees in Austria, primarily in Salzburg. Under the circumstances, Maria received no formal secondary education. The family emigrated to the United States in 1951 and settled in New Brunswick, NJ. Maria was accepted to Douglass College the following year, and then went on to Pennsylvania Women’s Medical College. While in residency at the Cleveland Clinic, she married Tamas Raday in April 1962. The couple settled in the Philadelphia suburbs, where they eventually had two children, Thomas and Sophia Raday. After practicing cardiology at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, Maria entered a career in the pharmaceutical industry.

She worked at both Smith Kline and Wyeth Laboratories before taking a position at Syntex Laboratories in Palo Alto, CA, in 1979. She was at one point the highest-ranking woman in the pharmaceutical industry, culminating her career as Vice President, Medical Affairs at Syntex. She was a tireless champion for women in the workplace, regularly recruiting other women as leaders as well as advocating for women in the administrative area to be promoted to higher positions and put on career tracks. At the same time, she sought to elevate the skills associated with women’s traditional roles as caregivers and household managers, insisting that — when homemakers sought to move into the workplace — these skills should be respected as important qualifications.

In 1987, Maria and Tamas separated amicably, remaining close friends until Tamas’s death in 1991. Maria became a devoted San Franciscan, active in the San Francisco Symphony, the Metropolitan League, the City Club, and the Asian Art Museum.

She was a deep and independent thinker and progressive in her politics. When she retired from Syntex in 1994, she worked on the first health-care reform-efforts under President Clinton, advising a key Member of Congress. She also pursued interests in art, architecture, classical music, fractals, photography, genealogy, and archaeology, traveling to study hieroglyphics at Oxford and to Israel and Egypt to view and translate relics firsthand.

Maria is survived by her children Thomas (Jill) and Sophia Raday (Blair Alexander); her brother George Geczy, Jr.; her sister Elizabeth Zuckerman; her beloved grandchildren Tom, Matthew, and Natalie Raday and George and Catalina Alexander; and many nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and grand-nephews.

A private memorial is planned for late spring.

Donations in memory of Maria may be made to the Nature Conservancy.

Arrangements are under the direction of The Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, Princeton.