Please share a memory of Edward to include in a keepsake book for family and friends.
A committed educator and lifelong patron of the arts, Edward S. McCatty passed away on June 14, 2025, in Keene, New Hampshire.
Born June 10, 1954, Ed grew up in Brooklyn, NY, where he attended Wingate High School, graduating in 1971. In 1975, Ed earned a bachelor’s degree in English and biology from Amherst College. He went on to receive a master’s degree from Yale Divinity School in 1979 and a master’s in literature from University College London in 2005.
After teaching for seven years at Brentwood School in Los Angeles, California, Ed returned to the East Coast in 1992 to join the faculty of Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut, where he would remain for 28 years. A literary enthusiast and logophile with high standards for his students, Ed was fully engaged in campus life, serving as dorm adviser, rowing coach, Adviser to Students of Color, and Faculty Adviser to the Judicial Committee. Ed was the consummate teacher, described by a faculty colleague as “both a teacher and a student: someone well equipped by virtue of his learning and his ability to communicate, to lead others to the discovery of, and excitement for, ideas.” Throughout his career at Choate, Ed received numerous awards from students and the administration for his teaching and contributions to the school community. As one student declared, “Mr. McCatty is passionate and devoted to bringing literature to life.”
Upon his retirement from Choate in 2020, Ed moved to Walpole, NH, where he remained an active member of the Amherst College Alumni Association and joined St. Michael’s Episcopal Church of Brattleboro, Vermont. In addition, he served on the board of the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center.
Ed cherished the many communities he lived in throughout his life and once proclaimed in a service at the Seymour St. John Chapel at Choate, “I am not a self-made man…having received loving gifts from God, and love and nurture from my family and from the communities in which I have been fortunate to live… And if I am not alone, neither are you.”
Ed is survived by a brother, Nico, of Brooklyn, NY, and numerous friends, colleagues, and former students whose lives were made better by his high standards, compassion, and grace.
A celebration of his life will be held on Saturday, September 6, 2025, at 11:00 am at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Brattleboro, Vermont.
The first thing I noticed about Eddie was his name: Edward Somerville McCatty III. A heavy lift for someone so filled with light. Freshman year, Eddie and I were on the second floor of James together. And on the same floor in Valentine sophomore year. Our friendship continued after graduation when we both were in Los Angeles. He eventually transferred from teaching at a “tony” LA private school to teaching at Choate, where he happily spent the rest of his professional life.
Eddie was incredibly handsome. I can never remember seeing him without his dazzling smile, save for the time I asked him and David Heim ’75 to pose for a photography class portrait. It showed Eddie at his most serious—not his natural state.
The summer before sophomore year, I was invited to his beloved Brooklyn and spent time with his mother, father, grandmother (“Little Mom”) and brother Nikki. They were an incredibly loving group and welcomed me warmly. Eddie’s mother was especially memorable: tall, dynamic and forceful. I never forgot the hospitality they extended to me. Eddie played the indulgent host and, since this was my first visit to New York City, took me to Coney Island, where we ate Nathan’s hot dogs.
Ed, as he preferred to be called later in life, was erudite, cultured and eloquent. I always enjoyed talking to him, because his enthusiasms were infectious and opened my world to new music, art and literature. It’s no surprise he spent his life as an academic.
I so looked forward to seeing him at our 50th Reunion and was saddened to learn, just a few days before, that he was not well enough to attend. I am not certain who was more disappointed, him or me. He was a beacon of joy in my life.
Mark McArthur, who entered Amherst in 1970 and graduated with the Class of 1975, died Oct. 24, 2004, in Chicago of chronic kidney disease. He was 53 and left behind his loving wife, Brett Robinson McArthur, whom he met during his year as an exchange student at Illinois Weslyan University in 1973.
Brett, who spoke of her husband’s passing in a telephone interview in early December, said that Mark lost a valiant struggle against nephritis, which he apparently contracted from an untreated strep infection years ago. He had undergone a kidney transplant in 1993, but his body eventually rejected the transplant, leading to years of dialysis treatments, three times a week for four hours at a time. His condition was compounded by diabetes, which led to the forced amputation of his left leg below the knee in May of this past year.
Despite it all, Brett said Mark’s death came as a shock. He had just returned home from a week-long hospital stay in late October, when she had to rush him back the very next day for what would be the last time. He was on the waiting list for a second transplant, but none was available. As their 17th wedding anniversary approached, Brett was struggling to contemplate life without the man she married on New Year’s Eve in 1987 and who had been a part of her life for more than 30 years. In cruel succession, this tragedy struck just three years after the couple lost their only child, Garrett, a corrections officer, in a fatal auto accident in Arizona.
Mark had been an employment counselor for the National Office of Program Development in Chicago, before his condition forced him into an early retirement in 1998. Brett worked for the Circuit Court of Cook County and retired in 2003. It was only after they retired from their jobs that the couple realized their dream of buying a house in Chicago, after a decade as apartment dwellers. Sadly, Mark’s condition was worsening at that point.
At Amherst, Mark was a history major, an interest that led him to become a devoted History Channel viewer later in life, his wife said. While Brett never had the opportunity to visit Amherst, she said she knew it from photographs and Mark’s friendship with Sam Boatner, a contemporary at Amherst as well as a Chicago high school classmate. While Chicago was truly home, Mark was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., April 24, 1951. He was the oldest of nine children, and both of his parents predeceased him, his wife said.
A funeral service for Mark was held Nov. 1, 2004, at St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago.
