In Memoriam
Yale Kneeland III
Yale Kneeland III of Hadlyme, CT died suddenly on August 25th 2014.
He was a graduate of St Paul's School, Yale University and NYU's Institute of Fine Arts.
Yale worked as a conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for many years.
He is survived by his wife Judith Cotton, son Timothy Cotton, his sisters Anna and Hopeton, and many nieces and nephews.
A memorial is planned.
from Leonard Chazen:
We recently learned that our classmate Yale Kneeland died suddenly on August 25.
I was introduced to Yale in the spring of our Junior Year when the Elihu 1963 delegation had its first meeting. Yale had started out with the Class of 1960, taken time off to serve in the military and work in business, and was now back in New Haven to get his college degree. He seemed like a man of the world who had been dropped into a group of inexperienced boys.
At our weekly Monopoly games with Dick Neubert, Yale would dispense the wisdom about career planning he had acquired while working at a small investment firm. “It’s not enough to earn a living,” he would tell us, “you have to make ‘ keeping money’.” I now see that Yale was talking about private equity before it even had a name. To someone who wondered what he would do with himself when he got out of college, Yale’s vision of life was totally dazzling.
During my years as a lawyer I always expected to see Yale at the head of a table running a big deal, but in fact I didn’t meet him again until a lunch following our fiftieth reunion. Then I discovered that he had left business early and had spent most of the past five decades as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum. Although by then I had learned that people’s lives take unpredictable turns, I wasn’t ready for this: the tough-talking Yale Kneeland had become one of the world’s leading experts on decorative arts.
At lunch my wife and I talked to Yale and his wife Judy Cotton about their travels in Morocco, and they offered to help when we were ready to plan our long deferred trip to North Africa. That would have been a great excuse to get back in touch with Yale. Unfortunately, it never happened, and I then I learned the news that Yale had died over the summer.