Died July 13, 2007
College: Pierson
I roomed with Lew for our sophomore year, and I’ll never forget him. He was a California kid with a hot rod mentality. He slept all day, stayed up all night and never went to class. He was handsome and charming and either got an A+ or flunked. His passion was philosophy and literature and he wrote long papers on a typewriter without doing an outline, notes or any revision. From the comments I saw on his work, he dazzled the professors. He had a photographic memory.
We did some crazy things that I won’t mention, and eventually he was asked to leave Yale. I didn’t hear from or about him until several years later when I saw in the NY Times that he had become law clerk to Justice Douglas on the US Supreme Court (seemed like a perfect fit to me). He visited me in NYC with a beautiful wife and seemed the same boisterous self. According to the Class Directory he finished college at UCLA and graduated number one in his class at USC Law in 1966.
As a lawyer, he wrote numerous pieces on subjects related to corporate law. At some point in the 1990s he became CEO of Pic N Save, a bargain basement retailer. He was forced out because he, in effect, made the stores too neat and hurt sales. ( Neatness was not his strong suit when I roomed with him).
He had five children and was grandfather to six. Someone said that “he will be remembered for his laughter, his good humor and his endless facination with the world of ideas”. I agree.
—by Wright Danenbarger
Obituary:
Lewis B. Merrifield, Ill was born October 22, 1939 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and passed away July 13, 2007.
He attended Yale and graduated from UCLA, going on to earn a law degree from USC in 1966, where he was a Phi Delta Phi and graduated as a Law Alumni Award Scholar with the highest scholastic average in his class and was a member of the Order of the Cois. A clerk to Supreme Court Justice William 0. Douglas for the 1966-67 term, an attorney and, until 1990, CEO of Pic ‘N’ Save Corporation, he was a loving father to Lewis B. Merrifield, I V, Kathryn Boccardi, Warren Merrifield, Natalie Baldridge, and Nicholas Merrifield, and grandfather to six.
He will be remembered for his laughter, his good humor and his endless fascination with the world of ideas.
Services will be held Friday, July 27th at 10a.m. at Good Shepherd Catholic Church, 505 North Bedford Drive, Beverly Hills.
In lieu of flowers donations may be made to Tower Cancer Research Foundation at www.towercancerfoundation.org or City of Hope at www.cityofhope.org�