Thomas R. Stetson ’54

Thomas R. Stetson ’54, of Woods Hole, Mass.; Feb. 6. After Brown, he served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War as a specialist in security analysis. He worked briefly for Conoco in its Texas oil drilling operations doing seismic work before moving to Massachusetts, where the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) hired him as part of its geology department. At WHOI, he enjoyed working aboard vessels creating topographical records of the seafloor and the geology beneath it. WHOI also offered diving training and he became a certified diver. One winter while on a WHOI mission with a scientific research team stationed on Ice Station Alpha in the Arctic, he and the team were marooned when a storm broke their landing strip and planes could no longer land. Eventually the ice moved close enough to Greenland that a plane could reach them. He retired as the administrator of University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System, a national collaboration of universities and scientific laboratories to coordinate oceanographic research. Fascinated by steam power, he had a model steam engine and a collection of steam whistles, which he blew by attaching them to a steam radiator while at Brown. He remained active and healthy sailing, fishing, quahogging, shoveling snow, and chopping wood into his 80s. He is survived by his wife, Judy, and two children.