I sadly report that we lost George “Tip” G. Atkeson on April 21, 2023. He died under hospice care from the complications of a brain tumor at his home in Essex, Connecticut. A native of New Haven and a pre-collegiate graduate of Deerfield Academy, in college Tip majored in the distinctive subject of political and economic institutions and was a member of Fence Club. The son of an admiral, it was not surprising that after college and the completion of preparation for naval command at Officers Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, he spent three years as an officer on destroyer duty in the Atlantic. Subsequently, he gained an MBA degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Early in his business career, Tip rose through various positions at General Foods, then became vice president of marketing of L’Oreal’s American subsidiary, vice president of both product marketing and marketing operations world-wide of Avon Products, and, from Antwerp, marketing director of the Belgian division of General Foods. Subsequently, he shifted into the world of executive search to become a partner and managing director of Ward Howell International, with which he topped off his career in charge of the Stamford, Connecticut, office before retiring in 1997. Outside of his work life, Tip was long active in civic affairs in Greenwich, Connecticut, on whose representative town government he served as he did on the board of directors of the Greenwich Land Trust and as co-president of the Greenwich branch of the English-Speaking Union. A singer in school and college, he was also a member of the men and boys choir of Christ Church Greenwich, which gave him, a strong anglophile, the opportunity to sing in English cathedrals and with his wife Janice to spend time in their Cotswolds cottage in Chipping Campden. Moving after retirement to Essex, Connecticut, he didn’t relent. He became a member of the board of directors of the town’s local concert series as well as executive director of the Southeast Connecticut Committee on Foreign Relations; and he kept singing, this time in the choir of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Essex. Tip was a skilled, award-winning photographer whose works hang on many classmates’ walls, including those of Roland Machold, who recalls Tip enviously as an early adopter of a “claw” first-baseman’s mitt, which he used to devastating effect on their 5th-grade team at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. George (as he remained known to some) was, though a modestly spoken man, a shrewd, serious business practitioner and civic activist. Born with a sunny disposition, he went about the world with an easy, frequent, puckish smile and an infectious warmth of personality. Predeceased in 1993 by his first wife Mary, he is survived by his second wife Janice, his children Meade, Jamie, and Elizabeth Saunders, their spouses and families, and ten grandchildren. A service in Tip’s memory will take place at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, May 21st, at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex, Connecticut.
Jim Banner ’53