Mark Spradling ’78

Mark Spradling ’78 died in Houston on December 15, 2024. He suffered from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Mark came to Dartmouth from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and lived in Topliff his freshman year. “Mark was such a delightful human being!” recalled fellow Topliff resident Hope Dobrow ’78. “I remember Mark talking to us ‘gals’ while polishing his Top-Siders and we gently advised him that Top-Siders did not generally get polished.” Mark majored in history, played freshman and JV squash, and worked for two years at Dartmouth Radio. He attended the foreign study program in Toulouse in the spring of 1976. Tom Allison ’78, on the same program, says, “The courses were entirely in French and sometimes we didn’t understand what was said by our professors. Mark became known for his pointed ‘Quoi?’ when there was something he didn’t understand. He was imitated by a few of his classmates, who were probably equally in the dark but not as vocal about being so.” Mark graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1977 and received his law degree from Stanford Law School in 1980. After clerking for a federal appeals court judge in New Orleans, he spent 37 years at Vinson and Elkins. In 2015, after the class secretary asked for a six-word description of his life, Mark wrote: “Family first, always; we’ve been blessed.” He is survived by his wife, Liz ’78; and children, Elizabeth, John ’11, and Peter ’14.