Mark Connolly ’79

Mark Connolly ’79 died on April 13, several days after suffering a brain hemorrhage on a hiking trip out West. Mark, who was raised in Bedford, New Hampshire, majored in government and environmental science at Dartmouth and was a New Hampshire state representative during his junior and senior years. He was a member of Alpha Delta, the Dartmouth Outing Club, and the Dartmouth Radio Club; participated in club rowing; and supported disadvantaged children in the Upper Valley through the College’s Big Brother-Big Sister program. Mark served as New Hampshire’s deputy secretary of state and later as director of the state’s bureau of securities regulation. There he oversaw fraud cases that netted more than $55 million in fines and investor restitution from 2002 until he resigned in 2010. A fierce advocate for citizens of the Granite State, Mark was described by a close family friend as having “probably the strongest moral compass of any person I have ever known.” After an unsuccessful 2016 bid for governor of New Hampshire, Mark returned to running the investment firm he founded and named after his home town of New Castle, New Hampshire, while continuing to opine on public policy issues through newspaper editorial pages. His last opinion piece, about the hubris of political fundraising, appeared in the Concord Monitor on the day he died—a fitting sign-off for a man who, in the words of an associate, “became a public servant to make the world a fairer, better place.”