April 30, 2010

‘Rari Quippe Boni’ (The good, alas, are few)

A reader of Curated Secrets wrote to let us know about the recent death of a beloved family friend, a classic, well-mannered American gentleman of a type now rarely encountered.

This reader went on to say a bit about his late friend Andrew Orr, a lifelong Philadelphia Main Line resident. Educated at the Haverford School and Yale ’56 (where he was DKE and Skull and Bones), Mr Orr was apparently no stranger to such local haunts of the establishment as the Merion Cricket Club and the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church. However, he also joined the Pennsylvania National Guard (in the First Troop, Philadelphia City Cavalry) and other causes a quiet, gentlemanly patriot might support in the mid-20th Century. One wonders if any his thirteen grandchildren will follow in his footsteps.

While we would hesitate to endorse the rites acted out from generation to generation in the Bones tomb, this obituary appears to bear out a motto that appears inside the walls — Rari Quippe Boni. At the very least, Requiescat in Pace.