As many of you may know my husband and your class president, Leo F. Caproni Jr., died September 4 in New York after a brief illness. He was 97. I am now filling two pairs of shoes.

Leo left Dartmouth before graduation to join the Army Air Corps after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was sent to the Pacific where he piloted transport planes to Iwo Jima and other besieged islands. He returned to Dartmouth to complete his degree in 1947. As an undergraduate he was a member of the Dartmouth Outing Club and Sigma Alpha Epsilon and served on the Jack-O-Lantern. Classmate David Heald was managing the Hanover Inn and hired Leo as his assistant and trainee. This began Leo’s odyssey in the hospitality industry. For the next 30 years Leo operated and managed an extraordinary number of inns, hotels and hotel groups, including New York’s Carlyle Hotel when President John F. Kennedy was a frequent guest. I met Leo in 1960 when I stayed in a hotel he managed on the Caribbean island of St. Croix. We were married later that year.

I introduced Leo to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where he fell in love with Truro; we built a house and became devoted summer residents for more than 40 years.

For 20 years Leo taught courses in hospitality management at the New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, achieving his doctoral equivalency and the title of full professor. He found teaching more rewarding than management, seeing his students go on to achieve successful careers in the industry. Teaching also gave him summers off to pursue some of his passions—fishing and half-hull modeling. His works in modeling were shown in a small gallery in Truro.

As you will recall, in December 2011 our class published Dartmouth at War, a book of 103 WW II memoirs Leo and I initiated and directed and that former President James Wright called “masterful.” Leo’s devotion to Dartmouth was reflected in his service on a wide range of class and College committees, including overseer of the Hanover Inn, Alumni Fund volunteer, class president for eight years and member of the 50th reunion committee.

Leo is survived by his wife (me) of 56 years and three children from two previous marriages, Peter, Carol and Leo III, 10 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. We held a memorial gathering at the New York City College of Technology in New York.

It is my sad duty to report the loss of Myron Tribus and Robert Wyman Rich.

—Joanna Caproni, 370 East 76 St., Apt. A 406, New York City, New York 10021; (212) 988-6012; (212) 988-6715 (fax); caproni@aol.com