Freshman Facebook		John, Mary, and Melissa, 1970		John and family, 2022

Flower and John at Wrigley		John, Mike Rade, and Flower

 
We lost John on July 13, 2026.  John’s son, Jesse, wrote a moving obituary, available online or as a printable version.

John was our first Webmaster. His successor, John Ackroff, writes:

It was my privilege, and a source of great joy, to work with John as we approached our 50^th Reunion.

I’ve known John since our Freshman year, when we became Brooks Brothers.  He showed up at the House less often after he was married, but I have a clear recollection of one afternoon when he was there in the dining room with his daughter Melissa, demonstrating how she was “the best peek-a-boo player in Berkshire County.”  We saw each other occasionally after that, at Reunions and the occasional football game, but it wasn’t until the run-up to our 50^th Reunion that we became really close.

In February of 2017, we participated in a conference call with folks from the College about starting a web site to generate enthusiasm about our upcoming Reunion, with John being Webmaster, probably as a result of his great success with our 25^th Reunion book.   In a follow-up call with Steve, Rob, and I, John tried to beg off, saying he had no idea how to manage a web site.  We struck an agreement in which he would take care of soliciting content from classmates, as he had done for the book, and I would handle the technical details.  Since I was Class Agent at the time, I felt I couldn’t ask people for more contributions (and doubted how successful I would be), but was happy to be “the man behind the curtain” to whom no attention was to be paid.

So we set out to build a web site.  The college “encouraged” us to use the vendor who had provided the site for 1970; their contact person had definite ideas about what we wanted, and what we should and shouldn’t do.  Having spent a fair amount of  my telecom career working with customers to resolve their needs and wants with what my employer was willing to provide, this did not sit well with me.  John was able to mediate calls with the vendor — many times I chose to be silent, difficult as that was — and we got him to agree to provide what we wanted; these calls were usually followed by “animated” calls between the two us in which we both castigated the vendor, letting off steam.  John was the one who was calm under pressure; without him,  I would have undoubtedly been the loose cannon that scuttled the project.  But we eventually got a site together.  If you haven’t watched the video explaining what’s on the site at https://williams71.org/whats-here/ I encourage you to do so; it’s John at his best, and was the first take — no edits.

Then the College said we should have a book.  Long story short, the partnership continued.  John solicited content, and I did behind-the-scenes support.  Our Reunion was delayed, and the vendor was amenable to suspending the deadline, allowing more material to be added.  Eventually we had a date for Reunion, and set a date for the electronic version of the book to be available before then, as a last-ditch effort to encourage attendance, with the physical book to be delivered shortly before the Reunion.  We were having trouble getting proofs from the vendor; eventually, as we got closer to Reunion, we did.  The first set came very close to the printing deadline, and it was a classic case of “we wanted to get this done in the worst possible way” to meet the deadline, and that’s how they did it.  Our feedback with revisions indicated that there were serious problems with the entire presentation, and we shortly received a second set of proofs that were in much better shape.  We indicated the changes needed in them, and were ready for the book to hit the presses.  We received an electronic version promptly, but the paper version, which we were supposed to have before our actual Reunion …  those of us who were there can remember John leading us on a chant of “where the hell is my book.”

After we gave a demo of the still-being-developed web site at our Mini-Reunion in 2018, I said to him, alluding to what the Survey would reveal to be our favorite movie, “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”  And so it was.  And still is.

John’s voice mail message ended with his asking the caller to “do something good for your fellow man.”  Steve Brown’s message to the Class on John’s passing and comments from classmates, below, show how he led by example.

Steve Brown sent a letter to the class:

Dear Classmates and Friends/ Family of ’71,

 John Chambers passed away last Monday night, July 13.  John had a tough time physically  since our 50^th . He endured 12 surgeries of various types in the  last 4 years and had spent much of the last 13 weeks in/out of the hospital.

 John was an extraordinary person, classmate, and friend to many of us for close to 60 years – more of that below.  John is survived by his daughter Melissa (who was born while John was at Williams), his son Jesse, and his  beloved partner Denise.

Here are some thimgs for all of you to read:

1. 1. His obituary  (recommend highly you read —  John Chambers Obituary | Keeper Memorials),
   2. His personal statement from our 25^th Reunion book, pages one and two,
   3. His personal statement from our  50^th Reunion book, pages one and two, and
   4. John Ackroff has set up a website for us to share thoughts about John. The link is at    https://williams71.org/john-chambers/. You can access the website by just going to the link.  You can also access John’s page at any time by going to williams71.org and choosing “In Memoriam” from the “Class of ’71” menu. To contribute  any thoughts, memories, pictures, please send to John Ackroff at [email protected] or to me at [email protected].  We will post as is – this process should make it easier for you to post because you will not have to log in to the website with a password.

The obituary also contains instructions for sharing thoughts and comments on John on a site run by CareBridge.

John was the soul of our class, and represented the best of us. He was a unique blend of wisdom, calm, understated charm, work ethic, common sense, and wonderful sense of humor.  John was the editor of our terrific 25 & 50^th reunion books – both huge undertakings, requiring hundreds of hours of work.  John, aided by a strong and committed team, did a great job organizing the history  of our 4 or more  years at Williams( wonderful and impactful years) and gathering classmates’ stories.

John was not satisfied with submission of  a resume or list of accomplishments. He urged us to write about life’s challenges, our beliefs,  and what was important to us – because he was interested in each of  us and our stories. John touched every page of each of both of those books. He was liked and respected by everyone who knew him.

We were all lucky to have John  as a classmate, and Sue  and I were lucky to count John as beloved friend for over 55 years.  We will miss him, but he will never be far from our thoughts whenever we get together with classmates and Friends/Family of ’71.

I am sure our prayers and thoughts are with Denise, Melissa, Jesse, and John’s grandchildren.  Condolence notes can be sent to the Chambers Family, PO Box 181, Huletts Landing NY, 12841.

Steve  

Paul Lieberman shared some thoughts:

I suspect i owe John a bit more than most classmates: he introduced me to my wife, 27 years ago. He was the superintendent of schools in Bronxville and Heidi was the assistant elementary school principal befuddled when he’d break into song, “The Mountains” or “Yard by Yard,” with the sweet-voiced high school principal, one Peter Clarke. Some years before I’d begun picking John’s brain while dealing, as an editor at the LA Times, with the culture wars over education raging out there. Now, after personal-life unpleasantries on the Left Coast, I was moving east with my Golden Parachute job for the newspaper, as its roving cultural correspondent based in NY. As the story goes, he took the other Bronxville administrators to a Yankees game and asked whether any — meaning Heidi — might want to meet this eligible (if eccentric) classmate returning to the area after decades away. Thus did we have a blind date — i took her see to “Shakespeare in Love,” yes, semi-mush — and given that I was not blind, 27 years of happiness have followed. I never failed to tell John that I was forever indebted to him — as when we gathered on Kiawah this past February — and so I remain.

 
Rob Farnham contributed an Ode to John, which he wrote on learning that he was entering hospice, with the hope that he might be able to see it.

He believed poetry to be a story told,
Could be in rhythm or just a phrase,
An emotion distinguished from life’s haze,
Irregular sometimes, put forth in several lines.

His being spoke to an understanding
Of human kind,
And all its grizzled complications,
But found the cracks of light and good to always settle within his mind.

He wished to see the roots,
Where experience manifested importance.
A laugh, a surprise, perhaps a hoot,
Filaments of minds attaining concordance.

Histories of events,
A less likely joy
Than an individual’s travelled road,
A scarred story then made bold.

Within this mind of likes and nots,
Harbored a love of thought,
Always providing a North Star:
Be one within your skin and grateful to those of Kin.

His life entwined in doubled spheres,
One by man and one of Nature,
Teaching always what traits to sow,
To celebrate a man called, Gaudino.

He channeled the poet Miller Williams,
Compassion was his hallmark,
When all was quiet and he alone,
His duel complete, at peace with wars “where the spirit meets the bone”.

Peter Clarke adds

John and I spoke briefly a few days ago. We both knew this would be our last opportunity to affirm our deep and abiding friendship. Words in these moments come at a premium, so we kept it simple. We said goodbye, expressed the love and respect that had grown so profoundly between us over the years, and let that quiet understanding linger in the air for as long as we could.

I did not really know John all that well when we were classmates at Williams. Our relationship began shortly before our 25^th reunion. John called and asked if I would write an article, for our reunion yearbook, of personal reflections on a quarter of a century of work in public education.

A few weeks after I sent him my article, John called and told me that he had shared my reflections with community members searching for Bronxville’s next high school principal. They wanted to meet me, and he wondered if I would be willing to drive down from Vermont to talk with them. When I arrived for my interview, I asked the first person I met for directions to the superintendent’s office. He smiled, and said simply, “Hello Peter. Welcome to Bronxville.”

For the next 30 years, we were no longer simply classmates but colleagues and the deepest of friends. Fred Rogers would sometimes ask people he met, “Who loved you into being?” I have been blessed with a number of those people in my life. John was one of them. His legacy is all the lives he touched as a friend and a teacher. Lives that were profoundly changed for having known him. 

Kennedy Richardson said

 
Mark Ruchman contributed the following:

It is with great sadness that I learned of Johns passing. We were roommates with Howie Horn at Williams D 27. I got there first Freshman year so took the single. I think we both
had a little bit of mutual cultural shock. We couldn’t have been more different. John was the rural upstate New York football player physical imposing even, perhaps, a little intimidating to me. I was the downstate New York pre-med who studied all the time. Eventually, over time, we got to know each other better and developed a mutual affection and respect. John was married sophomore year, I migrated to the Pre-med crowd at Bryant house and we didn’t see much of each other for the remaining three years. I learned of his struggle with cancer as a young man and recall him receiving one of the first bone marrow transplants at Johns Hopkins. Happily, we reconnected at a subsequent reunion and were
genuinely happy to meet again. We stayed in touch, swapping emails and photos. With some joy and sadness, I realize now our friendship may have taken over 30 thirty years to develop but we did get there. He was a good man and I will miss him.

 
Howie Horn wrote

John, Mark Ruchman and I were roommates freshman year in Williams D. The three of us were very different people from different backgrounds, but somehow it all worked and we all became friends. After freshman year, we went our separate ways and I didn’t see much of John for the rest of my time at Williams.

 

The thing that I remember most about John was his sense of humor. I always looked forward to seeing him at our reunions, and I used to enjoy his writing when he used to do our class notes. I will certainly miss him! 

Bruce MacNelly said

What a warm-hearted guy. Always upbeat in his quiet way. I’m glad to have had some time with him at our 50th – I was looking for him this past June also. Missed him then, miss him now.