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Thomas N. Perkins '91, Member of Corporation, Dies at Home

Crew Athlete, Lawyer, Director, War Worker, Official Here From 1905-1924, 1926-1937

Thomas Nelson Perkins '91, a member of the corporation, a distinguished Boston lawyer and director, an assistant to the Secretary of War during the Great War, died yesterday at his home in Westwood.

In his sixty-eighth year, Mr. Perkins had been in ill health for two years and had been bedridden since December.

He was a Fellow of Harvard College from 1905 to 1924, and again from 1926 to the day of his death. In 1926 during his absence from the Corporation he received Harvard's honorary degree of LL.D.

Mr. Perkins, who standing in the absent President Conant's place more than a year ago, advised an entering Freshman Class to do one thing and do it well, himself did many things.

Born in Milton, May 6, 1870, he had a distinguished record as a scholar and athlete. He received the A.B., cum laude, in 1891, and was captain of a winning Varsity crew. After College he graduated from the Law School and has since been engaged in practice in Boston.

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He was a director of the Boston and Maine Railroad, the Merrimac Chemical Company, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Stone and Webster, Inc., the Old Colony Trust Company, the Southern Pacific Company, the First National Bank of Boston, and numerous other companies.

During the Great War he was a member of the Priorities Commission and Chief Counsel of the War Industries Board, a member of the American Commission to the Inter-Allied War Conference in Paris, Assistant to the Secretary of War, and Assistant Director of Munitions.

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