JOHN J. "JERRY" SLOCUM Jr.

1941 - 2017

SLOCUM, John J. "Jerry" Jr. John Jermain Slocum, Jr. of Newport, RI, died peacefully on August 5th at the Newport Hospital, surrounded by his family. Mr. Slocum was the son of the late John Jermain Slocum and the late Eileen Sophia Sherman Gillespie Slocum, both also of Newport. Through his father, Mr. Slocum was descended from Myles Standish, military captain of the Mayflower shipment of colonists, which landed at Plymouth Rock in 1622; and Col. Herbert Jermain Slocum who participated in accepting the surrender of Chief Sitting Bull while serving with the Seventh U.S. Cavalry at Fort Buford in Dakota in 1881, and who fought against Pancho Villa under General John Pershing during the Mexican Expedition in 1916-17. Through his mother, Mr. Slocum was descended from Roger Williams, who founded the first settlement in present-day Rhode Island in 1636; Major General George Lewis Gillespie, who was awarded the first Congressional Medal of Honor for carrying messages across enemy lines to General Sheridan in the Battle of Cold Harbor during the Civil War in 1864; and Nicholas Brown Jr., who provided a large donation in 1804 to the College of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which thereafter became Brown University. Mr. Slocum was interested in genealogy, and cultivated a love of history throughout his life. He made significant contributions to several historical and preservation societies in Newport and Washington, D.C. Mr. Slocum, known to his friends as "Jerry," was born in New York City on October 29, 1941, attended the Buckley School in New York, the Groton School in Groton, MA, and Harvard University in Cambridge, MA where he received a bachelor's degree in 1964 and an MBA in 1968. He lived in Germany from 1950 – 1952, when his father was posted to Frankfurt and Bonn as Press Attache in the Office of the United States High Commissioner for Germany. Mr. Slocum began his career in investment banking in New York, at S.G. Warburg and then Brown Brothers Harriman, before moving to Newport where he ran for U.S. Congress in 1976 and 1978. In late 1978, he co-founded the investment advisory firm of Slocum, Gordon & Co. In Newport, Mr. Slocum served as a long-time director of the Alleta Morris McBean Charitable Trust, as a director of the Redwood Library and Athenaeum, and as President and Chairman of the Preservation Society of Newport County from 1989-1999. In 1999, the Preservation Society bestowed on him their Antiquarian Award, their highest award for distinguished service in historic preservation. Mr. Slocum was a president of the Harvard Business School Association of Southeastern New England, a president of the Society of the Cincinnati of Rhode Island, and chairman of the Library Committee for the Society of the Cincinnati in Washington, D.C. For several years, he sponsored visiting foreign officers and their families at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport. He was a director of the Newport Reading Room for nineteen years, a long-time governor of the Spouting Rock Beach Association, a member of the Newport Clambake Club, a member of the Union Club in New York City, the Somerset Club in Boston, and Palm Beach's Everglades and Bath and Tennis Clubs. Mr. Slocum is survived by his wife Diana Roberts Slocum; his children Marie Louise C. Kirchner of Washington, D.C., John J. Slocum III of Pensacola, FL, M. Olivia Beckwith-Smith of Rudgwick, England, and Lawrence L. G. Slocum of Newport; and 11 grandchildren. Mr. Slocum was interred in a private family ceremony at Island Cemetery in Newport, RI on August 12th, 2017.

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