John H. Frazee, Sr.

John H. Frazee, Sr., passed away at the age of 93 on September 29, 2025 at Azalea at Hamilton. Born in Point Pleasant, NJ, he was raised in Princeton and Dutch Neck, and resided many years in the Lawrenceville area. After retirement, he and his wife Connie lived in Hobe Sound, FL.

John graduated from Princeton High School and served in the U.S. Army. He was a sales manager at area automobile dealerships and owner of Quakerbridge Porsche Audi in Princeton. John was an avid sport fisherman and golfer.

Son of the late Harold J. and Elizabeth V. (Heal) Frazee, father of the late John H. Frazee, Jr., brother of the late Madri, grandfather of the late John Ryan Frazee, he is survived by his wife of 68 years Constance J. (Clinton) Frazee, a daughter and son-in-law E. Lynn and Ted McNulty, a son and daughter-in-law James and Dawn Frazee, a sister Carol Simko, and grandchildren Morgan McNulty, Erin McNulty, Alex Frazee, Tyler Frazee, and Regina Frazee.

Funeral arrangements are private under the direction of The Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, Princeton.

Jeremiah Ford, III
April 22, 1932 – October 1, 2025

Jeremiah Ford, III died peacefully at home in Princeton on October 1. Born in Philadelphia on April 22, 1932, Jerry was the son of Jeremiah Ford, II and Mary Hewitt Ford. Jerry spent his early education years at the Episcopal Academy outside of Philadelphia, followed by St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island where he graduated in 1950. A longtime Princeton resident, Jerry was a well-known and respected architect who had a profound impact on the Princeton architectural profession over the decades. After graduating from Princeton University in 1954, Jerry joined the Marine Corps and later came back to Princeton to obtain his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Princeton Graduate School of Architecture. In the Marine Corps, he served as a G-2 aerial photo interpreter in the first Marine Airwing in Japan. He was able to study the culture and architecture of Japan, which inspired his later work as an architect. Early in his career, after the Marine Corps, he apprenticed at Kenneth Kassler in Princeton, Harrison and Abramovitz, and Welton Becket in New York and the Port of New York Authority where he contributed to the work on the World Trade Center.

Jerry was the founding partner of three architectural firms: Walker Sander Ford and Kerr Architects and Planners; Short and Ford Architects, which changed to Ford Farewell Mills and Gatsch following the death of William Short; and Ford3 Architects. His projects included over 300 residential projects as well as preservation work, churches, libraries, schools, colleges, and commercial work. He was particularly proud of his role as Partner in Charge of the “Joint Venture Architects” in their restoration and renovation work of the legislative portions of the New Jersey State House and the State House Annex. He also designed the carpet in the New Jersey Assembly Chamber, which features the State tree, bird, flower and insect.

At Princeton University, he sang with the Nassoons, an all-male a cappella close harmony group. Later, former Nassoon members from the ’50s and ’60s gathered for reunion concerts across the country, trips he looked forward to every year. He was one of the founding directors of the Princeton Nassoons Alumni Association.

Jerry was a member of the Princeton Rotary, a board member of the Princeton Chamber of Commerce, a longtime member of the Board of Governors of the Colonial Club of Princeton University serving twice as Chairman, a board member of the Princeton Alumni Council, President of the Princeton class of 1954 from 1969 to 1974, President of the Princeton Area Alumni Association, trustee of the Nassau Club, and Chairman of the Board of the French American School of Princeton.

He is survived by his daughter Katherine Ford; stepchildren Dana Stewardson, Liza Connolly and husband Kevin, Caroline Thornewill and husband Luke; step grandchildren Ashley Stewardson and husband Trevor McGuinness (and their daughter Emlyn), Robert Stewardson, Lyla Connolly, Nicholas Connolly, and Wes Thornewill; two nephews and their families; and a niece and her family.

Jerry is predeceased by his wife Elizabeth Stewardson Ford, former wife Judith S. Ford, daughters Amanda Ford and Amy Ford, and sister Sally Ann Knapp.

A memorial service will be announced at a later date.

In lieu of flowers, please send contributions in Jerry’s name to Princeton Nassoons Endowment: nassoons.com/donate, or ArtWorks (where he and his daughter Amanda used to take classes together and where he was a founding member): artworkstrenton.org.

Adria Holmes Katz

Adria Holmes Katz passed away on October 5, 2025 at the age of 90.

She was born on April 28, 1935, in Springfield, MA. Her father was a professor of philosophy at Mount Holyoke College, and her mother was a trained commercial artist who worked at an art museum before marriage. Adria was raised and schooled in South Hadley, MA. She majored in philosophy at Radcliffe College and graduated summa cum laude in 1956.  She then won a Woodrow Wilson Scholarship to Oxford, where she completed a BPhil degree in Philosophy.  She returned to the United States to begin a doctoral program in Philosophy at Harvard, where she worked with John Rawls, but decided not to pursue the degree. Adria married her college friend, Stanley Katz, in 1960 and followed him first to Madison, WI and then to Chicago as he pursued an academic career.

After a number of years as a full-time mother of two children, she began to volunteer in the Oceanic collections of the Field Museum in Chicago. After the family moved to Princeton in 1978, she pursued her museum work in the Oceanian section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology. Having begun her career as an unpaid volunteer without formal credentials in her field, she rose to the position of Keeper of Collections of the Oceanian section, where she assisted a generation of Pacific anthropologists and formed a treasured network of scholars and museum folk.  The continuing engagement with the collection by visitors from many places and cultures is a tribute to her legacy at the museum.  She retired from the museum in 2019.

Adria had a lifelong love of nature that began with her childhood summers at Kennebunk Beach, ME. Adria and her family spent more than fifty summers in Chocorua, NH, renting a splendid old house on Lake Chocorua and under Mt. Chocorua.  She collected mushrooms, watched birds, and hiked the White Mountains with her family.  These were the happiest times of a life well lived. She was also an avid and skillful photographer of nature and of her family and friends.

Adria is survived by two children, both professors:  Derek Holmes Katz (b.1964),  who teaches Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Marion Holmes Katz (b. 1967), who teaches Islamic Studies at New York University. She has one grandson, Sam, who is now a law student at Suffolk University in Boston. Her only sibling, Janice Holmes Chapman, resides in Hanover, NH.

Adria and Stanley moved from Princeton to Stonebridge at Montgomery in Skillman in 2021, where she found opportunities for gardening and photography.

Funeral arrangements are by Orland’s Ewing Memorial Chapel. For condolences: OrlandsMemorialChapel.com/Adria-Katz.