David E Hunt

Portland- David E. Hunt of Portland, Maine died on July 31, 2018, at Montello Heights in Lewiston, Maine. David was born on May 10, 1953 at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital in Pennsylvania, the third child of James D. and Twyla (Burkert) Hunt, moved with his family to North Brunswick, N.J., at age five and attended North Brunswick schools from kindergarten through grade 9. In ninth grade he began studying Latin under the tutelage of his neighbor, Eunice Davidson, who taught at Linwood Jr. High, where David served as student body president and became an Eagle Scout. In the ordinary course, the next academic stop would then have been New Brunswick High School, but in the spring and summer of 1968 New Brunswick, like much of the country, was riven by racial turmoil, working around which seemed a very daunting prospect. At the suggestion of David's classmate and best friend, Mark Greenberg, the two of them applied to, were accepted and scraped together enough money to attend the Peddie School in Hightstown, N.J., as boarders. He was vastly changed by this experience in a variety of ways. By the time he graduated with the Class of 1971, summa cum laude and as a salutatorian, he had served as Student Body President and received the Wyckoff Cup, awarded annually to the student who has made the most significant contribution to the life of the school during his time there. He also had sung in the choir, appeared as Nicely Nicely Johnson in Guys and Dolls, read Caesar, Cicero and Virgil under a great teacher, John C. Jones, and became a life-long Episcopalian. Most of these developments (except the Latin, maybe) came out of nowhere. David also made some of the best friends of his life. After Peddie, David attended Dartmouth College, where he continued his study of Latin (including Catullus, Martial, and Lucretius under Prof. Edward M. Bradley), and majored in both History and Government, graduating magna cum laude. While at Dartmouth, David was the general manager of the College's radio station, WDCR, which was the only commercial, self-supporting college station in the country run exclusively by undergraduates. Now it has been joined in that distinction by Dartmouth's newer station, WFRD. David developed still more great friendships while at Dartmouth. David graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1978 and began his practice at what is now Debevoise & Plimpton in New York City. He moved to Maine in 1981 and worked at Pierce Atwood in Portland, practicing trusts-and-estates law there until 1992, having become a partner in 1986. His 1976 marriage to the former Denise M. Barbera, his high school sweetheart, ended in divorce in 1984. The only child of that marriage, Christopher E. Hunt, lives in Hayward, California. Since coming to Maine, David has been a member, for almost the entire intervening 37 years of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Falmouth. David married the former Elizabeth S. Pearce of Falmouth at St. Mary's in 1987, and they divorced in 2012. Their children are Alexandra S. Hunt of Portland and Thomas D. Hunt of Boston, Massachusetts. Tom seems to have acquired something of his father's affinity for Latin, having graduated in 2009 from the Hotchkiss School of Connecticut with a Classics Diploma. Tom works at Robert M. Currey & Associates in Boston. The family would like to thank the staff at Montello Heights for the excellent care he received there. David was predeceased by his parents, his older sister, Sharon Sapiro, of Falmouth, his older brother, James, of Wilkes-Barre, who died in infancy, his godson Mathieu David Verge Borderolle of La Brede, France, and his brother-in-law, Jeffrey Hadley of Rutland, Vermont. He is survived by his sister, Twyla Verge Borderolle of La Brede, France, her husband, Jean-Marc Verge Borderolle and their son, Daniel, as well as by David's sister, Alice H. Hadley, of Rutland and his brother, James W. Hunt, his wife, Lisa F. Hunt, and their children, Samuel J. Hunt, and Natalie A. Hunt, all of Belchertown, Massachusetts. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 11:00 am on Friday, August 10, 2018 at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 43 Foreside Road in Falmouth, Maine. Arrangements are under the direction of the Conroy-Tully Walker Funeral Home, 172 State Street, Portland, ME. To view David's memorial page, or to share an online condolence, please visit www.ConroyTullyWalker.com Those who wish are welcome to make contributions, in lieu of flowers, in David's memory to: the Peddie School at https://my.peddie.org/give.