Durand Echeverria


Durand Echeverria was an American historian, studying and writing about French writers and eighteenth-century ideas about democracy. He also translated several historically-important French documents into English.

Biography

Echeverria was born in Short Hills, New Jersey to Charles and Marie Echeverria. He attended high school at South Kent School, and in the fall of 1931 matriculated at Princeton University. He was captain of Princeton's lightweight crew which won the Goldthwait Cup in 1933 and 1935, and competed for the Thames Challenge Cup at the 1933 Henley Royal Regatta. He graduated ΦΒΚ in 1935.
Echeverria taught at several boys schools, and served in the South Pacific for the United States Navy during World War II. After the war, he returned to Princeton for his PhD. He joined the faculty at Brown University in 1950, and remained there until he retired in 1980. He was the recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships, a National Humanities Foundation grant, and a Guggenheim Grant. He also served as coach of the Brown crew for several seasons.
Between his 1980 retirement and his death in 2001, Echeverria lived with his wife in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where he served the town as a commissioner and conservation activist.