Ned Bandler

1929 - 2025

Ned Bandler
Ned Bandler, a resident of Bridgewater, Connecticut, and longtime Unilever executive who dedicated himself to numerous civic roles, has died. Ned was a devoted husband to Jean Bandler for 60 years.
Ned died May 5, after a long and fulfilling life. He was 95.
Ned had a distinguished 45-year career at Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate. He ultimately retired as senior vice president and director of Unilever United States, Inc. Still, he described himself as a simple oleomargarine salesman, referring to his early days peddling Good Luck Margarine to grocery stores and churches.
Ned served on the United States Department of Commerce Marketing Advisory Committee during the Johnson and Nixon Administrations and was a senior advisor to the Institute for Representative Government. President Clinton appointed him in 1996, and he was reappointed by President George W. Bush to the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. He served 26 years on the commission, which is dedicated to the identification and preservation of historical sites abroad associated with the heritage of U.S. citizens.
Ned Wendell Bandler Jr. was born in New York City on June 13, 1929, the son of Rhoda Uttal and Ned W. Bandler, Sr. His father was president of June Dairy Products Co., a creamery butter producer and cheese distributor. His mother was a poet and pianist.
The family spent summers in Milford, PA, where Ned developed lifelong interests in agriculture and gardening, passions cultivated under the tutelage of Ruth Metz, an uninhibited local farmer who taught him to swear at 7. From Stanley Roberts, a dairy farmer in nearby Montague, NJ, who helped him raise a prize-winning bull, he learned the gentle art of "cow stripping."
At age 16, after graduating from the High School of Music & Art, Ned enrolled as an undergraduate at Cornell University's College of Agriculture. There, he served as editor in chief of the Cornell Countryman magazine. He was a member of the Alpha Zeta agricultural fraternity -- then one of two dry fraternities on a liquified campus.
After serving his commitment for basic training for ROTC, he volunteered to take two more years of advanced officer training and was commissioned second lieutenant in the Army Reserves in June 1949. He retired nearly two decades later as a Lieutenant Colonel.
Ned counted his decision to enlist in the Army and his marriage to Jean Taft Douglas Brisker on June 20, 1964, as two of his most important life decisions. He frequently noted that the Army prepared him well for the absurdities of life in a Byzantine corporate bureaucracy; and several times, he said, his wife saved his career.
Ned began that career at June Dairy, never imagining that he'd spend nearly half a century at the world's largest purveyor of hydrogenated butter substitutes. At Unilever, he helped oversee some of the biggest takeovers of the day, including the purchase of Chesebrough Ponds in 1986 and the acquisitions in 1989 of fragrance giants Fabergé, Elizabeth Arden, and Calvin Klein.
He claimed never to have been bored, even when occupied with the more prosaic aspects of his job, which included oversight of the Lever House cafeteria.
Beyond his corporate and military duties, Ned was deeply involved in public and civic life.
Ned was the Vice Chairman and Director of the African Medical and Research Foundation, a nonprofit based in Nairobi, Kenya, best known for its Flying Doctors service. He spent decades as a trustee at Freedom House where he served as vice chairman, and an executive committee member of the organization.
In their commitment to unpaid service, Ned and his wife managed the Funeral Consumer Alliance of Connecticut, a nonprofit organization providing information on affordable, end-of-life planning.
In his local community of Bridgewater, CT, Ned served as Chair of the town Board of Trustees, Justice of the Peace, and Deacon Emeritus of the Bridgewater Congregational Church. For years he served as Chairman of the town's Republican Committee while his wife, Jean, served on the Democratic Committee. His credo as Justice of the Peace: There Is No Peace Without Justice.
Ned is survived by his spouse, Jean; sons James and John, and their wives, Rebecca and Gail. He had four grandchildren: Johanna, Daniel, Evan and Julia. He leaves his beloved brother, David K. Bandler, of Newfield, NY, and sister-in-law, Lenore, and their sons Steve and Rob.
In lieu of flowers or gifts, please keep the Bandlers in your thoughts. A Zoom memorial service will be scheduled soon, along with a list of charities that the family supports.