Henry Hill Anderson Jr., 98

Stonington, Conn.

Henry “Harry” Hill Anderson Jr. passed away peacefully in Mystic, Conn., on May 11 at the age of 98. Harry was born June 2, 1921, in New York City, to Henry H. Anderson Sr., and Helen James Anderson.

A graduate of Yale, Harry completed his studies there in three-and- a-half years so he could join the United States Army in 1943. He served in World War II as a Field Artillery captain in Patton’s Third Army having landed at Normandy on D-Day plus 30. He was a part of Patton’s historic campaign that helped to liberate Europe from the Nazis. After the war Harry got his law degree from Columbia University, though he did not follow in the Anderson family tradition to practice law.

An adventurer from a young age, Harry sailed his first Newport-Bermuda Race at the age of 15. Harry’s passion for the sport of sailing took him along many paths; from sailing as a child on Six Meters in the 1930s, to introducing the Finn dinghy class in the United States in the 1950s with his friend Glen Foster, to serving on the America’s Cup Selection Committee in the 1970s and ’80s. Harry was the Commodore of the New York Yacht Club during the club’s last successful defense of the America’s Cup in 1980.

Harry always saw sailing as an educational experience and tirelessly supported and promoted it, whether as a yacht club officer, U.S. Sailing director, college sailing advocate, Congressional Cup judge, financial supporter or advisor to many sailing organizations. Harry was actively associated with numerous educational institutions including Tall Ships America, University of Rhode Island, Yale University, and the U.S. Naval Academy. Anderson chaired US Sailing’s Appeals Committee for 25 years and had a hand in writing a good part of the racing rules of sailing during that tenure.

Harry was a devoted, life-long researcher driven by a compelling curiosity about subjects ranging from the location of Captain Cook’s ships on the bottom of Newport Harbor, to the lives of his illustrious antecedents. He participated in comprehensive publications and films about railroad magnate Arthur Curtiss James (another collateral ancestor), and America’s third vice president, Aaron Burr. He was determined that those forgotten (James) or maligned (Burr) be accurately documented, and assigned their proper places in history.

A longtime resident of Newport, R.I., Commodore Anderson sat on the boards of Tall Ships America, Seamen’s Church Institute, the U.S. Naval War College, the Rhode Island Marine Archeology Project, the Aaron Burr Association, the Fales Committee at the United States Naval Academy and the Foundation for the Preservation of Captain Cook’s Ships.

Over the years, and right up until the end, Harry would frequently write notes on an infinite number of topics, often on re-purposed paper. It is quite likely that many who are reading this tribute to Harry are smiling as they may have received one or many such notes through the years. Some were pointed in its message, others were anecdotal in their references, often quoting classic poetry and prose to make their point or deliver the message. Here is one of Harry’s notes to a friend in 2012: “Life’s pleasures are to be enjoyed in moderation, and apropos the cruising man, while we are not always borne with swelling sails before a blowing wind, neither do we drag out life struggling with headwinds; or befitting the fortune of the racing man ‘behind the foremost, ever before the foremost.’ One snatches one’s enjoyment of the brief and pleasant hours like a school boy in the spring holidays.”

Harry Anderson’s was a life well-lived.