John Cadwalader, 88, of Blue Bell, a retired Navy captain and descendant of an early Philadelphia family, died Sunday at Chestnut Hill Hospital. He had suffered a stroke two weeks earlier.
Mr. Cadwalader was an English teacher at the University of Pennsylvania for five years before entering the Navy in 1940. He spent World War II in the Pacific as an officer on the battleship Washington and a gunnery officer on the USS Monterey.
After the war, he received a doctorate in English literature at Penn but did not return to the classroom. Instead, he returned to the Navy.
He was a U.N. observer in Kashmir in 1951, then spent four years with the Naval Support Force in Antarctica.
In southern summers, he was aboard the icebreakers Eastwind and Westwind, helping prepare for and following up on the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58, when a worldwide effort was made to study the physical properties of the Earth, its magnetism, gravity, atmosphere and oceans.
In 1962, he was commander of Project Coldfeet, an intelligence-gathering mission to an abandoned Soviet scientific station in the Arctic for the Office of Naval Research.
The next year, he retired to a 25-acre farm in Blue Bell, where he gathered native trees and plants and kept chickens and Chesapeake Bay retrievers. For a time, he was a tree warden for Whitpain Township.
Mr. Cadwalader spent time at his cabin in Lycoming County and aboard his sailboat, a Herreshoff-28 ketch, in the Chesapeake. He took hunting expeditions to the Yukon and British Columbia until he was in his early 80s.
Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Cadwalader graduated from St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., and, in 1932, from Penn. He spent summers at the family farm in Blue Bell or in York Harbor, Maine. When he was 18, he spent the summer on a Montana reservation with a Blackfeet family.
He was a former board member of the Indian Rights Association, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Sophia B. Coxe Charitable Trust, St. Peter's School, the Friends of the University of Pennsylvania Library, and the vestry of St. Peter's Church.
Among the clubs to which he belonged were the Philadelphia Club, the Penllyn Club, and the Corinthian Yacht Club.
In 1983, Mr. Cadwalader donated his share of a collection of family portraits by Charles Willson Peale and other well-known painters to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Those portraits and family furniture formed the bulk of an exhibit titled ``The Cadwalader Family: Art and Style in Early Philadelphia,'' which the museum mounted in 1996 to mark the 300th anniversary of the family's presence in America.
He is survived by his wife, Lea Aspinwall Cadwalader; sons, John, George, David, and Gardner A.; daughter, Sandra L.; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held on Wednesday at St. Thomas Church in Whitemarsh.
Mr. Cadwalader was an English teacher at the University of Pennsylvania for five years before entering the Navy in 1940. He spent World War II in the Pacific as an officer on the battleship Washington and a gunnery officer on the USS Monterey.
After the war, he received a doctorate in English literature at Penn but did not return to the classroom. Instead, he returned to the Navy.
He was a U.N. observer in Kashmir in 1951, then spent four years with the Naval Support Force in Antarctica.
In southern summers, he was aboard the icebreakers Eastwind and Westwind, helping prepare for and following up on the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58, when a worldwide effort was made to study the physical properties of the Earth, its magnetism, gravity, atmosphere and oceans.
In 1962, he was commander of Project Coldfeet, an intelligence-gathering mission to an abandoned Soviet scientific station in the Arctic for the Office of Naval Research.
The next year, he retired to a 25-acre farm in Blue Bell, where he gathered native trees and plants and kept chickens and Chesapeake Bay retrievers. For a time, he was a tree warden for Whitpain Township.
Mr. Cadwalader spent time at his cabin in Lycoming County and aboard his sailboat, a Herreshoff-28 ketch, in the Chesapeake. He took hunting expeditions to the Yukon and British Columbia until he was in his early 80s.
Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Cadwalader graduated from St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., and, in 1932, from Penn. He spent summers at the family farm in Blue Bell or in York Harbor, Maine. When he was 18, he spent the summer on a Montana reservation with a Blackfeet family.
He was a former board member of the Indian Rights Association, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Sophia B. Coxe Charitable Trust, St. Peter's School, the Friends of the University of Pennsylvania Library, and the vestry of St. Peter's Church.
Among the clubs to which he belonged were the Philadelphia Club, the Penllyn Club, and the Corinthian Yacht Club.
In 1983, Mr. Cadwalader donated his share of a collection of family portraits by Charles Willson Peale and other well-known painters to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Those portraits and family furniture formed the bulk of an exhibit titled ``The Cadwalader Family: Art and Style in Early Philadelphia,'' which the museum mounted in 1996 to mark the 300th anniversary of the family's presence in America.
He is survived by his wife, Lea Aspinwall Cadwalader; sons, John, George, David, and Gardner A.; daughter, Sandra L.; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held on Wednesday at St. Thomas Church in Whitemarsh.
John Cadwalader, 88, of Blue Bell, a retired Navy captain and descendant of an early Philadelphia family, died Sunday at Chestnut Hill Hospital. He had suffered a stroke two weeks earlier.
Mr. Cadwalader was an English teacher at the University of Pennsylvania for five years before entering the Navy in 1940. He spent World War II in the Pacific as an officer on the battleship Washington and a gunnery officer on the USS Monterey.
After the war, he received a doctorate in English literature at Penn but did not return to the classroom. Instead, he returned to the Navy.
He was a U.N. observer in Kashmir in 1951, then spent four years with the Naval Support Force in Antarctica.
In southern summers, he was aboard the icebreakers Eastwind and Westwind, helping prepare for and following up on the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58, when a worldwide effort was made to study the physical properties of the Earth, its magnetism, gravity, atmosphere and oceans.
In 1962, he was commander of Project Coldfeet, an intelligence-gathering mission to an abandoned Soviet scientific station in the Arctic for the Office of Naval Research.
The next year, he retired to a 25-acre farm in Blue Bell, where he gathered native trees and plants and kept chickens and Chesapeake Bay retrievers. For a time, he was a tree warden for Whitpain Township.
Mr. Cadwalader spent time at his cabin in Lycoming County and aboard his sailboat, a Herreshoff-28 ketch, in the Chesapeake. He took hunting expeditions to the Yukon and British Columbia until he was in his early 80s.
Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Cadwalader graduated from St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., and, in 1932, from Penn. He spent summers at the family farm in Blue Bell or in York Harbor, Maine. When he was 18, he spent the summer on a Montana reservation with a Blackfeet family.
He was a former board member of the Indian Rights Association, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Sophia B. Coxe Charitable Trust, St. Peter's School, the Friends of the University of Pennsylvania Library, and the vestry of St. Peter's Church.
Among the clubs to which he belonged were the Philadelphia Club, the Penllyn Club, and the Corinthian Yacht Club.
In 1983, Mr. Cadwalader donated his share of a collection of family portraits by Charles Willson Peale and other well-known painters to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Those portraits and family furniture formed the bulk of an exhibit titled ``The Cadwalader Family: Art and Style in Early Philadelphia,'' which the museum mounted in 1996 to mark the 300th anniversary of the family's presence in America.
He is survived by his wife, Lea Aspinwall Cadwalader; sons, John, George, David, and Gardner A.; daughter, Sandra L.; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held on Wednesday at St. Thomas Church in Whitemarsh.
Mr. Cadwalader was an English teacher at the University of Pennsylvania for five years before entering the Navy in 1940. He spent World War II in the Pacific as an officer on the battleship Washington and a gunnery officer on the USS Monterey.
After the war, he received a doctorate in English literature at Penn but did not return to the classroom. Instead, he returned to the Navy.
He was a U.N. observer in Kashmir in 1951, then spent four years with the Naval Support Force in Antarctica.
In southern summers, he was aboard the icebreakers Eastwind and Westwind, helping prepare for and following up on the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58, when a worldwide effort was made to study the physical properties of the Earth, its magnetism, gravity, atmosphere and oceans.
In 1962, he was commander of Project Coldfeet, an intelligence-gathering mission to an abandoned Soviet scientific station in the Arctic for the Office of Naval Research.
The next year, he retired to a 25-acre farm in Blue Bell, where he gathered native trees and plants and kept chickens and Chesapeake Bay retrievers. For a time, he was a tree warden for Whitpain Township.
Mr. Cadwalader spent time at his cabin in Lycoming County and aboard his sailboat, a Herreshoff-28 ketch, in the Chesapeake. He took hunting expeditions to the Yukon and British Columbia until he was in his early 80s.
Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Cadwalader graduated from St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., and, in 1932, from Penn. He spent summers at the family farm in Blue Bell or in York Harbor, Maine. When he was 18, he spent the summer on a Montana reservation with a Blackfeet family.
He was a former board member of the Indian Rights Association, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Sophia B. Coxe Charitable Trust, St. Peter's School, the Friends of the University of Pennsylvania Library, and the vestry of St. Peter's Church.
Among the clubs to which he belonged were the Philadelphia Club, the Penllyn Club, and the Corinthian Yacht Club.
In 1983, Mr. Cadwalader donated his share of a collection of family portraits by Charles Willson Peale and other well-known painters to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Those portraits and family furniture formed the bulk of an exhibit titled ``The Cadwalader Family: Art and Style in Early Philadelphia,'' which the museum mounted in 1996 to mark the 300th anniversary of the family's presence in America.
He is survived by his wife, Lea Aspinwall Cadwalader; sons, John, George, David, and Gardner A.; daughter, Sandra L.; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held on Wednesday at St. Thomas Church in Whitemarsh.
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