HARRY W. LYNCH, JR.
A longtime community volunteer from Wilmington, Delaware, the late Harry W. Lynch, Jr. exuded an infectious optimism and zest for life that made him a friend to many and a stranger to few. Equally at ease with politicians and plumbers, he always had a new joke or good story to share. Whenever anyone asked how he was, his standing response was “terrific.”
Mr. Lynch was born in Wilmington and in 1940 graduated from Lehigh University where he was president of Delta Phi (St. Elmo) fraternity. He embarked on a career with the DuPont Company beginning at its Remington Arms subsidiary in Bridgeport, Connecticut. During World War II, he worked in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Hanford, Washington on the Manhattan Project which produced the atomic bomb. He retired from DuPont’s Wilmington headquarters as a manager in the Textile Fibers Department.
His interests were diverse, from raising tropical fish and collecting stamps and coins as a boy to gardening, traveling, and genealogy as well as collecting matchbook covers and cigar bands as an adult. He also was a lifelong waterfowl hunter and avid fresh and saltwater angler.
He started clipping newspaper mastheads as a teen. The Every Evening of May 7, 1932, published in Wilmington, launched his collection that eventually numbered nearly 2,000 entries, gathered mostly from his many domestic and international travels. Family and friends also contributed to his decades-long hobby. Mr. Lynch displayed his mastheads mostly chronologically in eight red notebooks. His last entry, The Wilson (N.C.) Daily Times, was dated April 22, 2003.
In Delaware, Mr. Lynch was an ardent churchman, hospital board member, and a trustee at a private school and a college. He founded the Delaware chapter of Ducks Unlimited and served on DU’s national board. He was a proud member of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. For catching a record Atlantic salmon, he landed a trophy from Field & Stream magazine.
But family mattered most to Mr. Lynch. Nothing pleased him more than to be surrounded by his three children and five grandchildren during holidays. Or any day. He died in Wilmington in 2004 at the age 85. |
