Aaron Sam Blanchard
August 15, 1968 – December 2, 2024
Aaron Sam Blanchard, known to all as Sam, died peacefully on December 2 at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, surrounded by his wife and daughters after complications from heart surgery. He was 56.
With loved ones spread across the country, Sam left a wide void in the lives of those he touched, from the young and old fencers he coached in Princeton and Lambertville, to countless friends in the fencing and comics communities.
Sam’s life, full of adventures, began in Oregon and took him to New Jersey.
Born in Salem, Oregon, he grew up in Independence, Oregon, enjoying a near-mythical Gen X childhood filled with freedom. He spent his days bicycling, racing in soapbox derbies, reading comics, and honing his artistic talents, which he inherited from his parents.
Sam first encountered fencing in 1987 while studying at the University of Oregon. Years later, as a young single father to his son, he earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the Oregon Institute of Technology.
After moving to Portland, Sam began fencing competitively at the Studio of American Fencing in 1995. He met his wife, Cate, a New Jersey native, in 1997, and they relocated with his son to the Garden State in 1998. On September 15, 2000, the family moved to Princeton, but three days later, Sam was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. He successfully overcame cancer through nine months of grueling treatment while continuing to commute to New York City daily.
Sam began fencing at the Princeton YMCA in 2004 under the guidance of coach and friend Charles Hurley. In 2012, he became the coach of the Princeton High School fencing team, a role he cherished. Coaching his daughter Ursula during her high school fencing career brought him special joy.
In 2018, Sam joined the Bucks County Academy of Fencing in Lambertville, New Jersey, as a coach after years of being a member. He also founded the Princeton Interscholastic Fencing Club that year to further share his love for the sport.
After leaving the corporate world in December 2019, Sam achieved his dream of coaching fencing full-time. When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted his plans, he devoted himself to his other passion—art. Working under the pen name “Shlepzig,” inspired by a character in Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, Sam gained recognition as an indie comics artist. After the world reopened, he became a regular at comic conventions and amassed fans worldwide.
Sam had many plans for the future, including creating more comics, teaching fencing classes and after-school fencing clubs, and embracing the adventures of grandparenthood.
Sam was preceded in death by his father, Melvin Blanchard, in May 2021, and his son, Bjorn Blanchard, in July 2024.
He is survived by his wife of 26 years, Cate; three daughters, Phoebe Blanchard, Ursula Blanchard (Riley) of Burnaby, British Columbia, and Jessica LeDuc (Michael) of Portland, Oregon; his mother, Merry Ann Blanchard of Lincoln City, Oregon; his sister, Andrea Whitaker (Ben) of Sherwood, Oregon; and two grandsons, Nikolai and Hawthorne of Portland, Oregon. He is also survived by several nieces, nephews, friends, students, former fencing students, and fans of his artwork.
A celebration of Sam’s life will be held in January at the Bucks County Academy of Fencing. The family asks that donations be made in his memory to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (givenow.lls.org) or the United States Fencing Foundation (usafencing.org/donate-foundation).
———
Eileen Gwynneth (Gwen) Southgate
Eileen Gwynneth (Gwen) Southgate passed away peacefully in her home on November 26, 2024, at the age of 95. Gwen lived in Amherst for the past six years, and previously in the Princeton, NJ, area for more than 50 years.
Gwen was born in London, England, in 1929. She earned a B.Sc. in Physics from University of London and an M.Ed. from Rutgers University. From 1950 to 1955, Gwen worked at Mullard Research Laboratories in the UK, where she met her husband, David. They were married in 1952.
Gwen came to the U.S. with her family in 1959 and lived in the Chicago area for seven years before settling in Princeton, NJ, in 1966. She taught science at Highland Park High School for over 20 years, until her retirement in 1992.
After retirement, Gwen spent many summers at the family cottage in Maine, enjoying reading, sailing, hiking, and local summer arts. She loved the use of words, and spent time playing Scrabble, creating cryptic crossword puzzles, and writing her memoir, Coin Street Chronicles. She also enjoyed gardening at their home in New Jersey and the wildflowers of Maine.
Gwen was active in many local and national organizations in the Princeton area. She was a founding member of the Princeton Evergreen Forum, a lifelong learning community; an active member of the League of Women Voters; and served on the board for the conservation organization Friends of Princeton Open Space. Gwen also recorded science textbooks for the national Recordings for the Blind, in honor of her mother who lost her vision with age.
Gwen was born into life with little means, other than her mother’s warm heart and a will to learn and succeed in life with educated discipline. As a child she survived the WWII London bombings and was evacuated to safe harbors with families away from the city of London air raids. She was reunited safely with her family after the war.
Gwen Southgate is predeceased by her husband of 66 years, David, and her brother Derek. She leaves behind her sister, Maureen, as well as her four children Diana, her husband Govind, Tim, his wife Deb, Jennie, her husband James, and Jill. She also leaves behind her 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, and in keeping with Gwen and David’s lifelong interests and concerns, the family suggests a donation to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
———
Robert Vichnevetsky
Robert Vichnevetsky, of Princeton, NJ, passed away on December 6, 2024 at Merwick Care Center in Plainsboro Township at the age of 94.
Robert was born in Brussels, Belgium. His education included Brussels Free University with a Master in Mechanical-Electrical Engineering and a Doctorate in Mathematics. He served in the 1950s for two years in the Belgian Air Force, at the time part of NATO. His early career was a member, later director of EAI’s European Computing and Research Center, newly established in Brussels to bring in new technologies to post-war recovering Europe, participating among others in the development of Europe’s nuclear electric power program. He moved in 1964, with his family, to the U.S. to join EAI’s Princeton Computing and Research Center, collaborating among others with the Apollo Space Program, and became an Associate Fellow of AIAA, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He joined Rutgers University in 1971, from which he retired in 2003 as Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering — also retiring from Princeton University, where he had been a Visiting Research Scientist and Lecturer in the 1960s and Visiting Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the 1970s and ’80s.
Important in those years was the new discipline of computer simulation, made possible by the appearance of new technologies including powerful electronic computers. The mathematics of science and engineering used in industry had to be updated, leading to a new scientific community organized first as local, then national societies, then an international association named IMACS, the International Association for Mathematics and Computer Simulation. Vichnevetsky played an important role in this process, and in 1973 was elected President of IMACS, bringing him, in the 1970s and ’80s, to serve with UNESCO-Paris as a member of FIAAC — the Five International Associations Coordinating Committee aimed at giving human advice for the introduction of advanced technologies to the developing world, also establishing principles of non-interference of politics with the growing international science community. It is the case that scientists are rated by their accomplishments, not any national or political affiliation, this resulting, in those Cold War years, in difficulties between two worlds that had to be resolved with common understanding and diplomacy more than politics.
Other than for articles and books that he published, he was the founding editor of three international scientific journals, two of them with Elsevier-Amsterdam and one with World Scientific – Singapore, all three published to this day. He was in 2005 elected to HOFEST – the Hall of Fame in Engineering, Science and Technology and presented with the Rockwell Medal. Locally, he has been President de ULB AA, the Alumni Association of his Brussels Alma Mater in the US, was member of the Old Guard, the Nassau Club, the Community Without Walls, and was a member of Le Cercle Francais de Princeton serving as President from 1992 to 2000.
His wife Rolande predeceased him in 1992.
He is survived by his beloved children, grandchildren, and great-grandchild.
Visitation will be on Wednesday, December 11, 2024 from 9 to 11 a.m. at Kimble Funeral Home, 1 Hamilton Avenue, Princeton, NJ, followed by services beginning at 11 a.m.
Burial will take place at Princeton Cemetery, Princeton, NJ.
Extend condolences and share memories at TheKimbleFuneralHome.com.
———
John Winfrid Ager
John Winfrid Ager, 98, of Princeton, NJ, died peacefully at home 22 November 2024, 61 years to the day that he moved in, his family by his side. He was born 2 November 1926 in Birmingham, Alabama, to John Winfrid Ager and Leila Lanier Lamar. In the midst of the Great Depression, the family moved to Black Mountain, North Carolina, where he graduated from Asheville School in 1944. He served honorably in the U.S. Navy until 1946, crossed the Equator, and witnessed the Bikini Atoll atomic tests.
After his service, he attended Harvard, graduating in 1949, having been captain of the fencing team and playing on the winning Harvard-Yale Prentice Cup tennis team in 1948. He then received a Fulbright Scholarship to attend the University of Amsterdam and Balliol College of Oxford, where he played for the Oxford-Cambridge Prentice Cup team in 1954. He also played tennis throughout Europe and made two appearances at Wimbledon in 1954 and 1955.
While at Oxford, he met his wife, Sheila Margaret Wilcox, who predeceased him in 2015. They initially lived in upstate NY, where he was a research chemist with Olin. They moved to Princeton in 1960 and he began his career with FMC, where he was awarded 10 patents for agricultural compounds.
He was predeceased by his brothers, John Curtis Ager and Law Lamar Ager, and his sisters Alice Isbell Ager and Frances Gary Ager. He is survived by his loving children, Catherine (Kit) Ager Chandler and John Winfrid Ager III, and five grandchildren — Sarah, William, Elizabeth, Georgiana, and Belle. A brilliant chemist and gifted tennis player, he adored his family, and lived life on his own terms. He will be remembered with love and appreciation, always.
Mr. Ager’s family will be celebrating his life in a private ceremony.
The epigraph comes by way of the first Arts page in Monday’s New York Times. At least once or twice every year, the Newspaper of Record throws out a line that hooks me. Picture a Dr. Seuss-style fisherman, perhaps the Cat in the Hat, dandling a brain-rot lure as a Dr. Seuss fish leaps out of the water, grinning idiotically while I’m thinking “This is not how I meant to begin a December 4 column on Franz Kafka; no, this is not what I meant to do, not at all, not at all.”