Ellis Smedley Ward Jr. ’43

Ellis Smedley Ward Jr. ’43 died September 13, 2014, in Media, Pennsylvania. Smed grew up in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the William Penn Charter School in Germantown, Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the honor society and played football and baseball. At Dartmouth Smed majored in English, was boxing champion in the 135-pound class, president of the Interfraternity Council and Dragon and a member of Beta Theta Pi. After graduation in December 1942 Smed was commissioned an ensign at the Notre Dame Midshipman School and served on a Pacific destroyer for two years until it was struck by a kamikaze plane near Okinawa. Later he was recalled during the Korean War and assigned to the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean. He was also commanding officer at the Naval Reserve Battalion in the Philadelphia Navy Yard; he retired as a captain. In 1947 he married Alice Murray, whom he had met while at Dartmouth. After the war Smed joined the Gulf Oil Corp. in the sales department in Philadelphia. In 1957 he moved to the Pennwalt Chemical Co., working in sales in the fluorocarbon products division. He retired in January 1991 as manager of the fluorocarbon division. They raised racehorses, skied, fished and traveled. Loyal to Dartmouth, Smed was an alumni fund volunteer, class agent and fraternity-sorority agent. Alice died in 2012. Smed is survived by children Ellis ’71, Tu’73, Elizabeth, Cynthia and Grant, nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.