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 Walter Hines Page II, whose home looked down on Cold Spring Harbor and out toward Long Island Sound, died on January 8, 1999 at the age of 83. A considerate, wise, and effective leader, he spent his entire working life as a banker. Following education at St. Bernard's, Milton Academy, and Harvard University, he joined J.P. Morgan & Co. After wartime service as a naval officer on a submarine chaser in the Atlantic, he steadily moved up Morgan's ranks, becoming a vice president in 1953 and vice chairman of the board in 1968. The latter role reflected his many major successes during the 1960s as head of the company's rapidly expanding international division. In 1971, Walter was promoted to Morgan's presidency and was chairman of its board when he retired at the end of 1979.
 Walter's life was also closely associated with the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Beginning in 1957, he was president of its parent body, the Long Island Biological Association, and starting in 1963, he served several long intervals on its Board of Trustees. Following his retirement from J.P. Morgan, he was for six years (1980-1986) our very able chairman.
Walter's roots on Long Island date to his distinguished North Carolina-born grandfather and namesake, Walter Hines Page (1855-1918). A journalist and editor, he founded with Frank Doubleday the publishing house Doubleday-Page, which in 1910 they located in Garden City, New York. Earlier in Boston, the first Walter Hines Page rose to become editor of The Atlantic Monthly and an adviser to the publishers Houghton Mifflin. Doubleday-Page achieved renown when it published Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie. The decision to publish this novel was made by Walter's grandfather, with Frank Doubleday later wanting to revoke the agreement. But its publication went ahead, albeit in a less sexually explicit form orchestrated by Dreiser's wife at the time, Sara. Soon after, Walter Hines Page founded The World's Work, a monthly magazine that placed great emphasis on the public responsibility of big business. He and Frank Doubleday also started Country Life in America, more immediately a financial success.
Walter's father, Arthur Wilson Page, joined the family firm in 1905 following his graduation from Harvard. He became its vice president in 1913, when his father was appointed American Ambassador to the Court of St. James by President Wilson. An extraordinarily well-liked ambassador, Walter Hines Page was to remain in London for the duration of World War I, dying just at its conclusion.
While with Doubleday-Page, Arthur Wilson Page bought an old homestead called County Line Farm in West Hills, several miles south of Cold Spring Harbor. The farm was adjacent to the estate of the distinguished New York lawyer Henry L. Stimson, who served as Secretary of State during both the first and second World Wars and as secretary of state during Herbert Hoover's administration. Walter's attachment to the Cold Spring Harbor region thus began in his boyhood years. Then he acquired his love of sailing boats, and it was from the Cold Spring Harbor Beach Club, which his father helped found, that he raced with children from the families whose estates dominated the lands around Cold Spring Harbor until the end of World War II. Among them was Jane Nichols, three years Walter's junior, whose family's land looked down onto the lower mill pond and St. John's Church.
 In January 1942, just after the United States entered World War II, Walter and Jane married. During the next six years, their three children were born-Jane Norton in 1943, Walter Hines, Jr. in 1945, and Mark Nichols in 1948.
As a youth, Walter learned from his father about the Biological Laboratory, which had been established in 1890 through gifts from Long Island's then preeminent family, the Joneses. Sited next to the Laboratory, along Cold Spring Harbor's inner harbor, were the turn of the century buildings of the Department of Genetics of the Carnegie Institute of Washington. The Department's mission was to broadly extend the applicability of the then newly rediscovered Mendelian laws of heredity. While the Department of Genetics labs had stable financial backing from the Institute, the Biological Laboratory was habitually underfunded and periodically faced extinction. Enlightened philanthropy from the owners of nearby Gold Coast estates came to the rescue in 1924 with the formation of the Long Island Biological Association (LIBA). The association's purpose was not only to keep the Biological Laboratory alive, but to expand its activities to include research as well as teaching. Arthur Page was LIBA's first treasurer, and in 1928, he became its president. By that time, his association with the Doubledays had ceased, and he was using his formidable personal qualities and great wisdom in behalf of AT&T, where he was vice president of public relations. He soon became a member of AT&T's board and remained in that position until just before his death at age 74.
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