George Notman PRINCE November 20, 1922 ~ May 20, 2008 Known to friends and family as "Gerry." Mr. Prince has left us behind for a new journey, he will be walking with Our Lord. Mr. Prince lived on Mercer Island from 1953-2006 and then at Park Shore Retirement Center until his sudden death from complications of pneumonia. Mr. Prince was born on November 20, 1922 in Schenectady, NY where his father, David C. Prince, worked as an electrical engineer for General Electric. When the company transferred him to Philadelphia in 1931, the family settled in Swarthmore, PA where they lived until 1941. Mr. Prince graduated from The William Penn Charter School in Germantown, PA in 1939 and went on to attend Harvard University and Harvard Law School until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in February 1943. Mr. Prince served as a German translations officer in military intelligence near Washington, D.C. from late 1944 until his release from active duty in 1946 when he returned to Harvard Law School and graduated in 1948. In 1945, Mr. Prince married Catherine Drinker Bowen of Bryn Mawr, PA and raised two boys, Andrew and Peter. They had a happy marriage and family until Catherine "Kitty" died from melanoma in 1974. Peter perished in a car crash in 1983. In 1977, Mr. Prince married Gloria Gunn Hagen, a native of the Seattle area. They were married until her death in 1998. In 1953, after brief employment with a New York law firm, and a 17-month deployment in The Korean Conflict, Mr. and Mrs. Prince moved to Seattle and settled on Mercer Island. Mr. Prince practiced law in Seattle, first with Bogel & Gates, then in private practice, finally with The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, where he rose to be Asst. Regional Administrator for Regulation until 1994. Mr. Prince retired from law in 1994, when the SEC closed the Seattle Field Office. The highlight of Mr. Prince's legal career was, when representing himself, he obtained a Federal Court injunction requiring State election officials to conduct the 1974 elections for the State Legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives in legislative and congressional districts of equal population, according to a plan submitted by a court appointed professional geographer. After retirement, Mr. Prince became a volunteer tutor at Gatzert Elementary School in Seattle and West Mercer Elementary on Mercer Island. At the height of this activity, he devoted 15-20 hours a week to it, frequently declaring it was the happiest and most rewarding work of his life.
He always had a smile to share and a good joke to tell. He was a true gentleman in every sense of the word. Mr. Prince wished to be cremated and his ashes will be returned to the family plot in Keene Township, NY by his son.

Published in The Seattle Times from May 25 to May 26, 2008.

Contributor: Blake Logan (49563616) •