54
Correspondence between Mr. Thoron’s
father and then-SPS Rector Henry Kit-
tredge indicated that Gray was confirmed
at Trinity Church, Boston, on Palm Sunday
– April 9, 1933.
Mr. Thoron went on to study at Harvard,
graduating
cum laude
in 1938, with an A.B.
in American history. He served as manager
of Harvard’s varsity baseball team as a
senior, before entering Harvard Law School
the next fall. He graduated in 1941 and
went to work for the Wall Street law firm
of Sullivan & Cromwell. Mr. Thoron worked
at the firm for only a few months before
the attack on Pearl Harbor on December
7, 1941. He enlisted in the U.S. Army the
following day, serving for the duration of
the war as a combat infantryman in an
armored brigade with the rank of First
Lieutenant and later as Company Com-
mander. Mr. Thoron was seriously wounded
leading an assault on the Siegfried Line,
for which he received the Purple Heart.
He was also awarded both the Bronze and
Silver Stars. He continued to serve in the
army reserves for several years after his
1945 discharge from active duty.
After the war, Mr. Thoron returned
to litigation work with Sullivan & Cromwell,
but shifted his focus to teaching when hear-
ing loss from his military service interfered
with his ability to follow the proceedings
in court. He became an associate law
professor at the University of Texas Law
School in 1948, remaining at the school
until 1954. Mr. Thoron spent one year, in
1951, as a visiting professor at the Univer-
sity of Michigan.
Upon leaving Texas, Mr. Thoron spent
two years in the Eisenhower administra-
tion, from 1954 to 1956, as an assistant in
the Justice Department to U.S. Solicitor
General Simon Sobeloff. During that
time, he successfully argued a number of
cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He
became dean of Cornell Law School in
1956. In that role, he focused on the hir-
ing of high-quality faculty, increased the
school’s endowment, improved enrollment,
revamped the curriculum, initiated the
Cornell Legal Aid Clinic, and established
a lecture series that brought some of the
top legal minds to speak at Cornell.
Mr. Thoron was kept on retainer by the
State of New York to argue cases before
the U.S. Supreme Court. He was a member
of the New York State Laporte Legislation
Ethics Committee and a special assistant
to the state attorney general. For more
than 30 years, until 1997, he was a trustee
of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights
Under the Law. Mr. Thoron stepped down
as Cornell’s dean in 1963 and continued
to teach, before mandatory retirement at
age 70 in 1987.
As a teacher, Mr. Thoron was admired
for his compassion and understanding. He
was known to invite students to his home
for Thanksgiving and to host informal
gatherings of faculty and students, many
of whom stayed in touch with him for
years. After his retirement, a former
student established a scholarship in Mr.
Thoron’s name.
In June 1939, Mr. Thoron married Mary
Dwight Clark, and together they raised
five children. The couple divorced in 1968.
On December 30, 1971, Mr. Thoron married
Pattie Porter Holmes, whom he met on a
cruise ship the previous year. The couple
enjoyed 29 years of married life, sharing a
passion for travel and sports until her
death in 2000. The Thorons rarely missed
a home Cornell football or hockey game
and were avid fans of the New York Giants
and Atlanta Braves. They were members
of the First Presbyterian Church of Ithaca.
Mr. Thoron was a lifelong Republican,
who served as a member of the Texas
delegation at the 1952 National Conven-
tion. He was a member of many organi-
zations, including the New York City and
New York State Bar Associations, chairing
the latter’s Ethics Committee, and the
American Bar Association. Mr. Thoron
was a life member of both the American
Bar Foundation and the American Law
Institute, a member of Phi Alpha Delta
and Phi Kappa Phi, and served as an
arbitrator for the American Arbitration
Association from 1965 to 1990. Mr. Thoron
also belonged to the Somerset Club of
Boston and the Harvard Club in New
York City, where he was also a longtime
member of the Century Association. He
was a trustee of Concord Academy (Mass.)
from 1958 to 1961.
Mr. Thoron was a devoted family man,
who always supported his children in their
endeavors and aspirations. He passed on
to his children a love of books, sharing
with them his sizable collection. He made
sure to spend one-on-one time with each
of them every summer. Mr. Thoron’s son,
Grenville, recalls that his father took him
to the World’s Fair in Seattle and on a
National Parks tour on the West Coast
one summer.
“Another summer he visited me out
in Wyoming, where I worked on a sheep
ranch,” said Grenny Thoron. “He stayed
at a nearby ranch and was surprised and
delighted to discover an aging John Dos
Passos, the famous author, occupying
the next cabin.”
Grenny Thoron also remembered that
his father wore a red vest every Christ-
mas and would record on a yellow legal
pad the gifts his children received so
they could write thank-you notes to rel-
atives. In later years, Mr. Thoron enjoyed
gathering his children together for the
holidays. When he was not with them,
he corresponded regularly with each
child, remembering every birthday and
often enclosing a modest check as a gift.
In response to a questionnaire from
St. Paul’s in the last years of his life, Mr.
Thoron wrote, “As a teacher, practicing law-
yer, and in wartime service with the Army,
my goal has been to assist [others] to
distinguish between right and wrong, and
to develop and adopt personal standards.”
Mr. Thoron is survived by his daughters,
Louisa H. Thoron and Molly D. Thoron-
Duran; his sons, Grenville C. Thoron and
Thomas G. Thoron; his grandson, Louis P.
Crosier; two great-grandchildren, Catherine
and Wilder Crosier; and numerous nieces,
nephews, cousins, step-children, and step-
grandchildren. Mr. Thoron was prede-
ceased in 2005 by his oldest daughter,
Claire Pyle.
1940
David Bennet Bronson
died peacefully
on July 1, 2015 in
Biddeford Pool,
Maine, with his
wife, Martha,
and his daughter,
Eleanor ’93, by
his side. He was
93 years old.
Mr. Bronson was
born on January 25, 1922, in Waterbury,
Conn., to Eleanor Lindley Bronson and
Bennet Bronson. He attended The Harvey
School in Hawthorne, N.Y., from 1933 to
1935 and enrolled at St. Paul’s as a Third
DECEASED
