Richard D. Kirkpatrick

Richard Darrow Kirkpatrick (93) of Brewster, Massachusetts, died September 9, 2011 after a long life of accomplishment. Born and raised in Melrose, Massachusetts, he graduated from Melrose High and a post-graduate year at Browne & Nichols in Cambridge where he managed the crew team that went to the Henley Royal Regatta. He graduated from Tufts University in civil engineering, was a member of the Delta Upsilon Fraternity, and helped establish the Tufts Yacht Club. Upon graduation in 1940, he entered the Marine Corps as a Second Lieutenant. Serving with the First Marine Brigade at Guantanamo Bay which later became the first Marine Division, he later participated in World War II in the Pacific in the battles of Guadalcanal, Saipan, and Okinawa. Finally, as one of the youngest Majors is the Marine Corps, he became tactical commander of all engineer forces in Nagasaki just after the war with Japan ended.

Upon his resignation from the Marine Corps, Richard joined his family firm of B. F. Smith & Company, Incorporated, water-well and test-boring firm in Somerville, Massachusetts. In 1953, after the death of his father and uncle, he succeeded as President and sole stockholder. A year later he liquidated the company, and joined Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., private bankers, in Boston for a short while and then Fidelity Management & Research Company, the mutual fund management company just beginning and managing only two mutual funds - Fidelity and Puritan. Soon after joining, he became the portfolio manager of Puritan Fund. He resigned from Fidelity in 1961 and joined John P. Chase, Inc. to manage their mutual funds. Within a short time Fidelity asked him to return and manage their newly purchased option company, U.S. Options, as well as manage the newly acquired Dow Theory Fund. This he did until 1964, when he joined CIT Financial Corporation in New York to manage their investment funds, later becoming a Director and Treasurer of the CIT Foundation. In 1968, Fidelity persuaded him to return a third time to organize and develop Fidelity's international operations then beginning. He formed Fidelity Management and Research (Bermuda) Limited with a staffed office in Hamilton, Bermuda to manage the foreign investment mutual funds. He launched the Fidelity International Fund N.V., which under his investment management was the best performing mutual fund in the world in 1969. In December, 1969, he launched the Fidelity Pacific Fund S.A. After this successful career transition from engineering to investment management, Richard decided in 1970 to retire (at the age of 51) and move to Florida. Retirement was never complete, however. He managed numerous individual trusts, his own investments, and for four years worked for the First National Bank and Trust Company of Naples (FL) as a trust officer and Vice President of investments. Becoming disenchanted with Florida, he built a house on a salt marsh in Brewster, Massachusetts (on property once owned by Mayflower passenger and ancestor, Constance Snow), and lived there for the rest of his years.

Richard's hobbies included boating and genealogy. Upon his first retirement he bought a yacht and with his wife, Jean, cruised on it in Florida and the Bahamas for over a year before settling down on dry land in Key Biscayne, and later, Naples, Florida. His favorite yacht club was the New York Yacht Club, but at different times he had belonged to eight yacht clubs and was commodore of two. His genealogy interests derived from his family history going back to the Pilgrims and the Revolution. In addition to research on his own and his wife's ancestry, he was a Geological Assistant for the Cape Cod National Seashore Park, investigating land titles during the time that the park was accumulating property along the Cape's eastern shore.

A member of Delta Upsilon Fraternity, the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, Bulldog Club of New England, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he was earlier a director of the Home for Aged Women (Boston), Sea Pines School (Brewster) and a member of various yacht and athletic clubs in Boston, New York, London, and Bermuda. He supported, as Treasure of their election campaigns, seven candidates for local, state, and national positions.

Predeceased by his wife, Jean (Wilson) in 2000, Richard is survived by his three children, Charles, Richard, and Jane, eight grandchildren, and ten (one more on the way) great-grandchildren.

Burial will be private. In lieu of flowers, please send donations in his name to Wild Care, Inc. 10 Smith Lane, Eastham, MA, 02642 (www.wildcarecapecod.org).