JOHN FRITZ HARTSHORNE

1925 - 2017

HARTSHORNE, John Fritz Retired journalist and management consulting association executive, died on September 16, 2017, at the age of 92. A resident of Cohasset, Massachusetts for the past 28 years, he moved there from Bronxville, New York, his home for 22 years while employed in New York City. For 14 years before retirement, Mr. Hartshorne was Executive Director of the Institute of Management Consultants, accreditation body for the management consulting profession. Previously, for 18 years, he was Director of Development for the international management consulting firm of Cresap, McCormick and Paget, also headquartered in New York.

Mr. Hartshorne came to management consulting from Business Week magazine, where, in 1948, he was employed as the magazine's first staff photographer. He next served as copy desk editor and then went to Boston as BW's first New England correspondent. He returned to New York in 1951 as Assistant to the Editor and Publisher, Elliott V. Bell, and directed public relations for Business Week.

In 1960, John Hartshorne married Mary Cumner of Cohasset, Massacusetts, who was at that time an interior designer in New York City. Their two children, raised in New York Clty and Bronxville, are Ellen H. Whitney and Prescott C. Hartshorne, both now residents of Concord, Mass. with children of their own -- Jay and Peter Hartshorne and Anna Whitney.

While working in New York City, Mr. Hartshorne was active in the YMCA, serving as chairman of the McBurney "Y" on 23rd Street, as a director of the YMCA of Greater New York, and as president of the Northeast Region of YMCAs. In Bronxville he was a member of the school board. And in Cohasset, he served at various times as president of the Cohasset Conservation Trust, the Gulf Association, and the Hull (Mass.) Lifesaving Museum.

John Hartshorne was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Yale University, where, as a naval officer trainee, he obtained a degree and a commission in 28 months. In 1946, he served as deck officer on the USS General W.A. Mann, AP112, a troop transport.

Mr. Hartshorne was born in New York City in 1925, and raised in East Orange, New Jersey. His father, Richard Hartshorne, was first a County, later a Federal, judge. His mother, Ellen Sahlin, half Swedish, was before her marriage an interior designer. Their three children, besides John, include the late Richard, Jr. of Sacramento, California, Nancy H. Bell of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the late Penelope H. Batcheler of Philadelphia, PA.

Physically active in retirement, John continued a lifetime dedication to the esoteric sport of skate sailing -- propelled on 22 inch skates across ice on local ponds at two- to three- times wind speed. He also rowed year-round on the Gulf River estuary beside his house, but unconventionally: a special rig installed in his Alden Ocean Shell enabled him to row facing forward (so he could see where he was rowing, he explained).

A gentler retirement diversion was building boat models. These were "scratch built" (not from kits) in exquisite detail and designed to be sailed under radio control in the Gulf River or on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, where Mr. Hartshorne vacationed every year of his life on a one-acre island owned by the Hartshorne family since 1920.

John Hartshorne was a Life Member of The Thoreau Society, 341 Virginia Road, Concord, MA 01742. He asked that any contributions, in his memory, be sent to that organization. At his request, no memorial service will be held. His remains will be interred at Cohasset Central Cemetery.