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Frederick Wood Gerstell, age 88, died peacefully on November 8, 2024 at Indian River Estates retirement community in Vero Beach, Florida.
Fred was born in the suburbs of Philadelphia and spent his childhood in that region, except during World War II, when his father Wood Dailey Gerstell was stationed at Grumman (Bethpage, New York) as an engineer in the U.S. Navy. Fred himself would eventually do a short stint in the Navy, and in that capacity he worked at the Electric Boat Company in Groton, Connecticut.
Fred graduated from the Haverford School in Haverford, Pennsylvania in 1954 and received a bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1958. He taught History and English at Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey for 40 years. He spent some summers obtaining a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, an institution where his uncle Richard Gerstell had earned a doctoral degree in biology some decades earlier. Never tired of learning, Fred enrolled at the University of New Brunswick (Canada) in the 1990s, for further studies of history and literature.
After retirement from the Lawrenceville School, Fred lived for more than a decade at Pennbrooke Fairways, a golf and tennis community in Leesburg, Florida. He moved to Vero Beach shortly before the CoVid pandemic.
Fred was an avid player of racquet sports, especially squash, and won numerous tournaments while associated with the Merion Cricket Club in Haverford, Pennsylvania. He coached a variety of sports at the Lawrenceville School, and assisted in coaching the Princeton University junior varsity squash team.
He is survived by a sister, Marguerite “Mimi” Gerstell of Vero Beach and of Stonington, Maine; and by (maternal) first cousins James Paul MacElree II, David Eyre MacElree, Wendy MacElree Beck, Susan Fordyce Dunaway, Mary MacElree Propper, Ellen MacElree DeVegh, and Diana MacElree. His nearest survivors on his father’s side are second cousins Barbara Debevoise Dinsmore and Nancy Debevoise.
Arrangements are by Thomas S. Lowther Funeral Home & Crematory, Vero Beach.
© 2024 Lowther Funeral Home. All Rights Reserved.
Marina Muldowney - Friend
December 8, 2024, 3:20 am
Years ago, Reader’s Digest had a monthly article titled “The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met.” For me, Fred was that character. I didn’t meet him until he was in his eighties when we struck up a friendship in the Fitness Room at our retirement community Fred was brilliant, eccentric, and played a mean hand of bridge. He never watched TV – unless one of his favorite sports teams was on – but he was a true bibliophile. He had a quote from any historical figure you could name, and he could recite from memory more lines, stanzas and poems than anybody I ever knew. He was also kind. When I was quarantined in my apartment during the pre-vaccine Covid days, every morning Fred would slip a paper under my door with a typed limerick on it. They were always humorous, some even a bit risqué, but they never failed to brighten my day. Fred spoke at my husband’s Celebration of Life and said he never quite understood why my husband and I had “adopted” him, but he was glad we had. I’m not sure who adopted who, but Fred was my friend, and I shall miss him.