It’s a new year, and after two difficult years many are hoping for brighter times in 2022. But to start the year, U.S. 1 looks back at some of the bright lights who left us in 2021 for its annual In Memoriam issue.
Icons of the Arts
Lucy Graves McVicker
May 9, age 90.
McVicker was an award-winning artist and a Princeton resident since 1957. She was a founding member of the Princeton Artists Alliance. She was also a member of the American Watercolor Society, the New Jersey Watercolor Society, and the Garden State Watercolor Society. She won prizes in numerous art shows, and her work is part of many private and corporate collections — and it graces the cover of this issue.
Stuart Duncan
April 30, age 93.
A noted New York theater producer and central New Jersey theater critic, the New York City-born Duncan came to Princeton via Princeton University where he graduated in 1950 and became a longtime Grand Marshall of the university’s annual reunions P-rade. The connection to the region was solidified when he met his future wife of 65 years, Nellie May Oliphant from Trenton. They met while performing in a student production at Princeton’s Miss Fine’s School.
A former vice-president of the family-owned company that had the exclusive U.S. rights to distribute Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, Duncan left the business to team with fellow New York theater enthusiast Edgar Lansbury to produce the important Off-Broadway revivals of “Waiting for Godot” and “Long Day’s Journey into Night” and the 1971 premiere of the legendary Broadway musical “Godspell,” financed by a backers’ gathering Duncan held in his Princeton living room.
For the past several decades, Duncan was known for his theater reviews for the Princeton Packet and U.S. 1, where he annually requested to review one of his favorite theater events, the Princeton Summer Theater.
Bob Thick
May 30, age 71
Thick, a Hopewell resident since 1984, was a founder of Off-Broadstreet Theater alongside his wife, Julie. He studied music in his native Michigan, where his family owned movie theaters, and was lured east by actor and real estate professional Karl Light.
A connection with pollster George Gallup led him to open the theater in the space that Gallup had used for Mirror of America, where audiences would be shown movies and commercials, and pollsters would gauge their reactions. “One day I mentioned to someone that I would like to have a theater somewhere, and literally a hand descended upon my shoulder,” Thick told U.S. 1 in a July, 2019 interview. “I turned around and it was George Gallup, who said, ‘I have a building for you.’ It took a few years to get off the ground, but that’s how things got started for us at Off-Broadstreet.”
Off-Broadstreet operated until 2016; its Greenwood Avenue space is now home to Hopewell Theater.
Sarah Dash
September 20, age 76
The Trenton pop singer was a member of Patti LaBelle & The Bluebelles, performed with The Rolling Stones, and was the city’s official music ambassador.
Shortly after her death, Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora noted “Our motto, ‘Trenton Makes, the World Takes’ was alive and well with Sarah. What Sarah made was beautiful music refined by a lifetime of experience and numerous contributions to the arts and the community.”
Community Builders
Gillian Wendy Slater-Godfrey
October 8, age 92.
Slater-Godfrey was born in London and trained as an occupational therapist, but she was best known as the creator and first director of the Suzanne Patterson Center and Princeton Senior Resource Center, from which she retired in 1994. She first made her mark in Princeton with her work for Alexander Road-based AAMH, where she created the boarding home outreach program.
Sara Cooper
June 21, age 59.
Cooper built a career in marketing and business development, but after being diagnosed with ALS, the disease that ultimately took her life, she turned her attention to advocating for others facing an ALS diagnosis. She held marketing and business development roles with Town Topics, The College of New Jersey, Princeton Magazine, and Moxie Woman, and she founded Cooper Creative Group in 2016 to help area companies realized their full potential.
She also served on the boards of Christine’s Hope for Kids and Hope Loves Company, which provides emotional support for children and young adults living with parents suffering from or lost to ALS.
The Academics
Geddes W. Hanson
March 27, age 86.
Hanson was the first permanent African American teacher at Princeton Theological Seminary. He studied physics and philosophy at Howard University before earning his master’s of divinity at Harvard and his PhD D at the seminary.
In 1968 he helped organize the first “Conference of Black Seminarians.” He held various teaching and administrative roles at the seminary, focused on church administration, conflict, and theories of change, and retired in 2009 as professor of congregational ministry.
Robert Hollander
April 20, age 87.
Hollander was professor emeritus of European literature and French and Italian, and a renowned scholar of Dante at Princeton University. A member of the faculty since 1962, he was best known for his seminar on Dante, which he taught for 35 years.
He also wrote or translated 25 books and worked with his wife, the late poet Jean Hollander, on an acclaimed translation of “The Divine Comedy.” He also initiated what is known as the Dartmouth Dante Project, an effort to digitize centuries of commentary on “The Divine Comedy” that was one of the first applications of computer technology to the study of literature.
Peter C. Bunnell
September 20, age 83.
Bunnell was instrumental in having photography recognized as a valid academic discipline whose art and history are worth studying.
At Princeton University, he was the inaugural David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art from 1972 until his retirement.
He retired from Princeton in 2002 and that same year consulted with the U.S. Postal Service on a “The Masters of American Photography” collection of stamps.
“In the past, the postal service has done American painting and sculpture, bugs and birds, and everything else — but this is the first time the government has recognized photography,” Bunnell told U.S. 1 at the time. “As you can see it worked out very beautifully.”
Public Servants
Jack Rafferty
February 17, age 82.
Rafferty was Hamilton’s first full-time mayor, a title he held for 24 years starting in 1975. Prior to his time as mayor, he served six years on the Hamilton Township Committee (now council). He also served one term in the New Jersey General Assembly.
Under his stewardship, Hamilton Township welcomed Hamilton Hospital (now RWJ Hamilton), the Hamilton Train Station, and the development of Veterans Park.
After retiring from his position as mayor, Rafferty served as the executive director of the Hamilton Partnership and remained active in the New Jersey Republican Party, where he served on the New Jersey Republican State Committee.
Phyllis Marchand
March 25, age 81.
Marchand was a past mayor of the former Princeton Township. Of her 22 years on the Princeton Township Committee, she served 14 as mayor. During her tenure she received widespread attention for her deer culling program in which she contracted a firm that provided sharpshooters to trap and kill Princeton’s over-abundant white-tailed deer.
After working in publishing in Manhattan, she moved to Princeton in 1966. She worked as book indexer of The Woodrow Wilson Papers edited by Princeton University historian Arthur Link.
Additionally, she served as chair of the D&R Greenway board of trustees and was active in numerous community organizations including McCarter Theater, HomeFront, Community Options, the Jewish Center of Princeton, and Corner House, among many others.
Paul Sollami
July 15, age 90.
Sollami was a Georgetown-educated attorney and U.S. Army veteran. In addition to practicing in the Trenton area and serving as an administrative law judge and Ewing Township Zoning Board attorney, he spent 21 years as a Mercer County Freeholder.
During his tenure he voted in favor of several notable projects, including constructing the county ice rink, the airport, and numerous improvements at Mercer County Community College.
