HANOVER, NH — Anton “Tony” Morton died November 21, 2019, at Kendal at Hanover after a short illness.
He was born Anton Salomon in Frankfurt, Germany on December 27, 1932. Nazi persecution caused his family to move to the U.S. They lived in Malden and Roxbury, MA. He attended Boston Latin, where he made lifelong friends. He was the first of his family to attend college, graduating magna cum laude from Harvard in 1953.
In 1953, he moved to Princeton to pursue a doctorate. In 1956, he married Sabra Wakefield, a graduate of Wilson College, whom he had met at a folk dance.
He was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy. They moved to Pensacola, FL, where he did research for the Navy. Their son Michael was born in 1958. Princeton awarded Tony a doctorate in social psychology in 1959; his thesis examined why certain people within a group become friends.
In 1960, they moved to Bedford, MA. Their son Evan was born in 1961. In 1962 they moved to Lexington, where they participated in public service organizations, local politics, and Jewish congregations. He entered the Naval Reserve as a Lieutenant Commander, but resigned his commission over U.S. involvement in Viet Nam.
He worked for many consulting firms, mostly around Boston, including 13 years at Arthur D. Little. In 1988, he founded ASM Associated, which he ran for 20 years before retiring.
In the 1980’s Tony and Sabra built a vacation house on a pond in Conway, NH. In 2011 they retired there after 50 years in Lexington. Health problems brought them to Kendal in 2015. He quickly made new friends and was known for his social nature and jokes.
He loved languages, words and their origins, Scrabble, collecting and trading stamps, reading (fiction and nonfiction, often about spies), folk music, travel, jokes (good or not), chocolate, cutting wood, and napping. He deeply loved his family, both near and far.
He is survived by his wife Sabra of Hanover; his son Mike and Mike’s wife Dani Capsis of Lyme; his son Evan and Evan’s wife Becky Derby and their children Mark and Eliza of Lexington, MA. He left many friends of all ages in many places.
On Friday, 3 January 2020, at 2:30 p.m., there will be a gathering at Kendal, 67 Cummings Rd., Hanover.
The family welcomes donations in Tony’s name to www.bluecardfund.org, which helps Holocaust survivors, or www.michaeljfox.org for Parkinson’s Disease research.