55
Liberties Union in 1963. He resigned from
ordained ministry in 1965 and moved to
Cambridge, Mass. He became a loved and
respected teacher of English, (and Latin
or Greek when there was student interest)
for 26 years at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional
High School in Sudbury, Mass. He and his
wife, Martha, moved to Biddeford Pool,
Maine, in 2000.
Mr. Bronson devoted much of his life to
teaching and writing, publishing articles
in both theological and educational journals.
He loved school, both learning and teach-
ing, and said that he felt a “marked degree
of restlessness” if he went too long without
studying. His interest in examining, ex-
ploring, and “understanding everything”
made him a natural teacher. He focused on
the context of and connections between
ideas, events, and people and refused to
accept easy or unconsidered answers.
Reflecting on his profession, Mr. Bronson
often remarked that teaching has been
defined as leading people into situations
from which they can escape only by
thinking. He was also fond of Thoreau’s
comment about needing to preserve his
ignorance upon which his growth depended.
Mr. Bronson is survived by his beloved
wife of 50 years, Martha; his children,
John ’69, Sarah, Charles ’72, Henry, and
Eleanor Bronson ’93; his step-daughters,
Lucinda Dean ’75 and Laura Hyde, and
their husbands, Paul Dean ’75 and Arthur
Hyde; six grandchildren; and five step-
grandchildren, including Laura Dean ’04.
1944
William Matthew Iler
a man dedicated
to his family and
helping others,
died on August 23,
2015, in Beverly,
Mass. He was 88.
Mr. Iler was
born on Novem-
ber 13, 1926, in
New York City. He
arrived at St. Paul’s School in the fall of
1940, after attending the Buckley School
in New York and the Rumson School in
New Jersey. At SPS, he played football
and hockey for Old Hundred and rowed
with Halcyon.
In a recommendation for the V-12 Navy
College Training Program from April of
1944, Vice Rector Henry Kittredge praised
Mr. Iler’s leadership for “keeping track
of the attendance of all the 440 boys in
this School.”
After graduating from SPS, Mr. Iler
deferred his college enrollment for two
years, working on the family farm, Rolling
Knolls, in Middletown, N.J., where, among
other duties, he aided his father’s business
of providing acres of peonies and other
flowers to the New York flower market.
He eventually went to Princeton, at the
urging of a friend, where he majored in
economics, rowed, was a member of
Cottage Club, and participated in the
ROTC program. Mr. Iler was deployed to
Korea out of Princeton.
According to the National Personnel
Records Center,
Mr. Iler first landed in
Japan before assignment to Korea on
July 6, 1953 – three weeks before fighting
ceased in the region. In February 1954, he
landed at Busan at the southeastern tip of
the Korean Peninsula. As the 2nd Lt. USA,
D Battery, Artillery, 140th Infantry Division,
his service included involvement with
Armed Forces Aid to Korea (AFAK) pro-
gram, through which he happily carried
out various post-war reconstructive work.
Mr. Iler stayed on in South Korea after the
war to complete building a primary school
for the local province. He was later hon-
orably discharged as a Captain, having
been notified of his promotion on the ship
that carried him home across the Pacific.
For his service in the Korean War, Mr.
Iler received the National Defense Serv-
ice Medal, the Korean Service Medal,
the United Nations Service Ribbon, the
Republic of Korea Presidential Unit
Citation, and an Overseas Service Bar.
His reconstruction efforts were com-
mended in a framed certificate signed on
May 9, 1954, by the chief official of the
Kapyung Educational District in Korea.
On January 18, 1964, Mr. Iler married
Edith “Deedie” Wolcott Devens at the
Milton Academy Chapel in Massachu-
setts. Between 1965 and 1972, the couple
had four children, Edith, Matthew, Samuel,
and Alexander.
Mr. Iler worked in the textile business
during his professional life, first in New
York and then in Boston with J.P. Stevens.
Former in the fall of 1936, following in the
footsteps of his brother, Lindley ’35.
At St. Paul’s, Mr. Bronson took up boxing,
and (as he phrased it) “exulted in the rough
and tumble of football.” He was elected
captain of the second Isthmian football
team. He was a member of the Der Deutsche
Verein and the Drama Club and served as
secretary of the Cadmean Literary Society.
He enjoyed hiking and amateur forestry
in the woods around St. Paul’s, later hiking
the Appalachian Trail with his SPS friend
and classmate John Moore ’40.
Mr. Bronson’s time at St. Paul’s was
immensely important to him. He valued
not only the start of friendships that would
last throughout his life and his academic
work, particularly his linguistic studies
(French, German, and Latin), but also the
daily attendance at Chapel. Though his
family was Episcopalian and he was well
versed in religious tradition, his love of
the Scriptures deepened at St. Paul’s, and
he embraced the daily liturgy – a powerful
constituent of his mental geography he
later referred to as a “great gift.”
After St. Paul’s, Mr. Bronson attended
Yale University for two years before en-
listing in the Navy and in the U.S. Marine
Corps from 1942 to 1946, where he served
as a flight instructor, teaching recruits how
to fly Corsairs, North American SNJs, SBDs,
F4Fs, F6Fs, and Stearman Primary Trainers.
After the war, he returned to Yale, earning
his B.A. in 1947 (Class of 1944). He attended
New York’s Union Theological Seminary
and Princeton Theological Seminary and
earned his S.T.B. from the Episcopal Theo-
logical Seminary in Cambridge, Mass.
He earned his S.T.M. (1956) and his Th.D.
(1961) from Harvard Divinity School.
Mr. Bronson served in the parish min-
istry from 1950 to 1955, first at Trinity
church, Hartford, then at St. Andrew’s
in Bloomfield, Conn. During his several
years of graduate study at Harvard, he
was a chaplain to Episcopal students at
M.I.T., then assisted at All Saints Church
in Belmont, Mass. From 1959 to 1965, he
was a professor at Episcopal Theological
Seminary in Kentucky. He believed that
all people should have equal rights and
was active in the Civil Rights Movement
of the 1960s, serving as vice-chairman of
C.O.R.E. in Lexington, Ky., in 1962 and as
chairman of the Central Kentucky Civil
