Deceased November 25, 2012

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25th Reunion Book Entry

In Memory

Verne R. Read of Milwaukee and Oconomowoc Lake, Wis., died Nov. 25, 2012. He was a managing member of Wisconsin Securities Partners LLC and retired chairman and president of T.A. Chapman Co.

Verne attended Amherst from 1940 to 1941. He joined Alpha Delta Phi, the swim team and glee club. In 1941 he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, serving as a lieutenant during WWII as a weatherman. He graduated from Amherst after receiving credit for his weatherman training.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, he married Marion Merrill Chester of Milwaukee and moved to Milwaukee to work for the family department store. He continued his career as managing member of Wisconsin Securities Partners. In 1972 he ran for U.S. Congress in the 9th District.

Verne co-founded Bat Conservation International and the National Park of Samoa, for which he received the Chevron Conservation Award.

He was an avid tennis player, squash player, skier, mountain climber and pilot. He and Marion celebrated their honeymoon climbing the Matterhorn and led four expeditions to the Himalayas, the last being the first American expedition to reach the summit of Mount Xixabangma in Tibet. In 1959 he was critically injured in a 50-foot fall on his head in the Grand Canyon while rescuing a young woman from a ledge. The episode was reported in the London tabloids, “Milwaukee Businessman Falls for Blonde.” It was the first helicopter rescue from the canyon and is still referenced in Grand Canyon history books. He took the same trip down the river the next year.

Verne was secretary of his Amherst class, established the Read-Mayo Smith and American Founding Endowment Funds and regularly attended the American Founding Colloquiums hosted by Prof. Hadley Arkes. He spent his waning weeks listening to a CD of Amherst songs.

He is survived by his wife, Marion; son Ross ’73, daughter-in-law Mary (Smith ’75), grandson George ’08 and granddaughter Marion ’11; daughter Alice, sons Alexander and Thomas, their spouses and 12 grandchildren.

Ross Read ’73

25th Reunion

VERNE R. READ

I left Amherst in February, 1943 to become a weatherman in the U.S. Army Air Corps. In June, 1944 I received a degree in meteorology from MIT, my B.A. degree from Amherst in absentia, and a second lieutenant's commission in the u.s. Army Air Corp Weather Service. After serving in the Air Corp variously as a line weather forecaster, a long-range weather forecaster and a hurricane specialist in the u.s. and overseas until May, 1946, I was discharged from the service and entered Harvard Law School from which I graduated in 1949. Because my years since gradua­tion from Harvard Law School have been spent mainly in business rather than practicing law on a full time basis--except for five years with a tax firm in New York City--I have been involved over the years in a broader number of activities than I might have been otherwise. Generally speaking, my two and one-half year stop at Amherst and my legal education has stood me in good stead, whether managing a medium-sized specialty department store, serving on the boards of family-owned businesses and community non-profit organizations or founding and developing a national conservation organization for the preservation of bats and their habitat. I believe Amherst is a great college but would benefit by adopting a long-range planning process which would involve the larger community of the College, including the alumni to a greater extent than they have been. I believe in a world free-trade market, e.g., GATT and NAFTA, and pro choice for women and not letting government run anything that can be run privately. I am concerned by the growth of the federal govern­ment's deficit and by the added burden and cost of perplexing government regulations and the growing burden and threats of legal disputes. I am pleased to have received the National Chevron Conservation Award in 1989 "In recognition of exceptional service to the cause of conservation." My lasting contribution to making the world a better place in which to live is obtaining, together with two other individuals, congressional and presiden­tial authorization in 1988 and a dedication this summer of the National Park of American Samoa, which will result.in preserving the U.S.'s only true tropical rainforest as well as the culture and traditions of the native Samoans. For 43 yearsr have had a lovely wife, Marion, with whom I share almost all of our family and outside interests. My four children, one Amherst '73, and their families (eleven grandchildren) share a summer compound on Oconomowoc Lake, Wisconsin and a ski retreat in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. My children are great parents first and, second: president of a specialty finance company in the business of selling, leasing and renting transportation equipment, primar­ily tank trailers and refuse vehicles; assistant district attor­ney for Milwaukee County; owner of a convenience store; and an American Airlines captain. I consider my profession to be asset investment and management, but in the last five years Marion and I have devoted more time to tennis, jogging, sculling, climbing, flying a Bonanza A36TC, soaring in high performance gliders for extended periods limited only by the capacity of my bladder, and cross country and downhill skiing.  We think these activities are preventive medicine which will keep us out of wheelchairs. Our maxim is "Live long, live hard and die fast."