Dear Williams community,
I write with the promised commemoration of former Alumni Trustee Lamson (Choppy) Rheinfrank, Jr., ’62, who passed away in Concord, MA, on April 27 at the age of 84.
Choppy was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio. His father, Lamson Rheinfrank, worked in sales for Libbey Glass Company, a firm whose history dates back to 1818. His mother, Lydia Spitzer Rhenifrank, was an artist who studied in Europe and in New York with the avant-garde sculptor and painter Alexander Archipenko.
Choppy attended Maumee Valley Country Day School, which had only recently become co-educational. He later recalled that there were six men and ten women in his graduating class. While there, he was urged to join the football team despite his lack of interest (“I didn’t want to play football. We were sailors in our family”) because the school was trying to fill their roster.
Choppy was admitted to both Yale and Williams, but chose Williams after discovering that the courses here were almost entirely taught by faculty. He arrived in the fall of 1958 with no intention of continuing his football career but carrying a hamster in a birdcage. Neither his intentions nor, sadly, the hamster survived his first year. Inspired to try out for a walk-on position on the football team, he made the freshman squad and started every year thereafter, playing linebacker and right guard (everyone played both offensive and defensive positions in those years). Choppy’s JA and teammate Bob Stegeman ’60 recalls that Choppy and Mike Reily ’64 were responsible the vast majority of tackles in Choppy’s senior year, including during Williams’ 12-0 triumph over previously-undefeated Amherst. A fall 1960 Sports Illustrated roundup later wrote that “Rheinfrank is fast, tough and smart.” “I was really mad, because I wanted to be ‘smart, tough and fast,’” Choppy recalled with a laugh.
Academically, Choppy arrived with a strong background in mathematics, a disposition that undoubtedly contributed to his future business success. But at Williams he was most drawn to political science and history. He studied with many of the era’s best-known faculty in those fields, including Professors Robert Gaudino, John Hyde ’56, Fred Greene and Fred Schuman. He eventually majored in Political Economy, with what he described as a heavy emphasis on the political side.
Throughout his academic life Choppy displayed an unconventional mind, a strong independent streak and a quick, unshakeable focus on subjects that interested him. In a 2011 oral history for the college he said, “I rarely looked at any books that were course books. I was bored by them. But what I loved about Williams was the faculty and the teaching and talking about it… I’d go up [to a faculty member] after class and say, ‘Let me ask you, what are the two or three most favorite books you have on this particular subject you talked about today, and that really interested me?’ And they would spend 15 or 20 minutes after the class and talk and say, ‘Well this book was good. This is interesting. This talks about the subject very well.’ I’d go and order those books and I’d read until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. I read more books, I swear, on the courses I took, that were not required textbooks, than any other student in my class, maybe in the four years I was there.”
Choppy also pledged to a fraternity at Williams, in keeping with his family’s tradition and the campus culture of the time. He was later persuaded of the need to eliminate fraternities and in hindsight supported the efforts of his housemate and football teammate Bruce Grinnell ’60, who led the student push that helped end Williams’ Greek system. “I loved the fraternity,” Choppy later said, “I loved all my roommates, I loved all the people in it. I was so happy to be in a fraternity. But I suddenly realized it was an unfair system…. [The elimination of fraternities] cleared the way for co-education and made it much better, as it turned out.”
Choppy’s life after graduation is a story in itself, and I recommend that you read the family’s obituary to take in all the details. A few weeks after graduation he married Sally Lyman, a Vassar student to whom he had been introduced by his sister. Choppy and Sally had been wed for 62 years at the time of Choppy’s passing. Three of the couple’s four daughters attended Williams, as have numerous grandchildren and members of the extended family.
Fresh out of Williams, Choppy first joined the Coast Guard, then co-founded an asphalt paving company, Standard Havens, just as the Interstate Highway System was coming into being. After he sold that company he once again demonstrated his keen sense of timing by launching an air pollution control venture right after the passage of the Clean Air Act. He sold that company, too, and went into retirement.
Choppy served as an alumni trustee on the Williams Board from 1993 to 1998. Former Trustee Mike Keating ’62, whose tenure overlapped with Choppy’s, recalls Choppy’s business background as his greatest asset on the Board. Choppy was very concerned about cost, including administrative growth, and frequently reminded the Board that those costs would have to be passed on. He was also a strong critic of tenure, which he felt disincentivized productivity and hindered schools’ ability to respond to shifts in program demand. He became a prominent speaker on the subject, appearing at a 1998 Harvard conference and on a 2001 Williams panel, “Should Tenure Be Abolished?,” moderated by New York Times reporter Kate Zernike. But Mike recalls that Choppy was also able to laugh at his own peculiar interests and passions. This enabled him to challenge the Board’s assumptions and ask them to consider a business-oriented point of view without being seen as an obstructionist.
Choppy Rheinfrank deeply, passionately, cared about Williams and its people. This was the place that had given him room to discover his interests and explore ideas. The place where he made lifelong friends—and where he was studying when he first met his future wife. He devoted a great deal of energy to trying to sustain and strengthen the special character of the college. As he put it in his typically plainspoken way:
it was… talking to these professors about what they thought about things and listening to them… They just were really unusual people and very good, and they would talk to you as long as you wanted to after a class, and I admire the hell out of that.
A Celebration of Choppy will be held on September 27, 2025, in Concord, Massachusetts. Please visit his obituary for details and to contribute to his Book of Memories.
Choppy is survived by his wife Sally and four daughters and sons-in-law: Caroline Rheinfrank ’88 P’20 and Chopper Bernet; Virginia (Gina) and Willy Foote; Emily ’93 P’27 ’25 and John Birknes; and Lydia Rheinfrank ’95 and Kyle Rusconi; as well as numerous grandchildren, including several who are also Williams alums.
Our thoughts are with them and all of Choppy’s family, colleagues, friends and classmates in this time of loss.
Maud