Richard K. Thorndike Jr., Broker, 90

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Richard King Thorndike Jr., an old-line investment banker and broker
known to his clients as "Dividend Dick," died of cancer March 26,
2003, at his home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, at the age of 90.

Mr. Thorndike, formerly of Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, was a
partner with F.S. Moseley, a Boston investment banking company started
in the early 1900s. His nickname referred to his fondness for stocks
that paid a dividend.

The company later was known as Moseley, Hallgarten, Estabrook and
Weeden.

His daughter, Sylvia T. Pope of Brookline, described Mr. Thorndike as
"always a conservative, a proponent of the 'buy low, sell high' theory
of investing, with a strong, safe strategy for delivering to his
clients. He believed you should buy something with the good companies
and hang onto it."

Until his death, she said, her father "remained confident about the
companies he liked and he watched them closely." He advised his
clients and his family "to stay engaged" with the old standbys of real
estate, solid stocks, and bonds.

"Dick was a person of style and class, refined gracefulness, and
disarming modesty," said his son-in-law, Cambridge District Judge
George R. Sprague. "He was very successful in his business career but
very modest about it and not flashy."

High finance, however, did not leave Mr. Thorndike humorless, his
daughter said. "He was a quiet man but with lots of twinkle in his
eyes," she said.

Growing up in Boston's Back Bay, Pope said, she never knew her father
as other than bald "and I never thought it was not beautiful. When his
hair started to thin in the late 50s and early 60s and got to be a
little fringe, he shaved his beard and his head every morning."

One day in the 1970s when "Annie" was playing in New York, New York,
Mr. Thorndike and his daughter were walking along Fifth Avenue when
someone ran up to him for an autograph, thinking he was Daddy Warbucks
in the Broadway hit.

"I am not Daddy Warbucks," he told the fan. "I am Yul Brynner." Then,
his daughter said, he signed his autograph, Richard King Thorndike,
and walked off.

Mr. Thorndike was born on a farm in Millis. His mother, Florence Adele
Macy Thorndike, was a niece of Roland Husey Macy, founder of the Macy
Department Stores.

Mr. Thorndike's grandfather was George Quincy Thorndike, a well-known
painter of the French Impressionist school, whose works are in the
Museum of Fine Arts. The Macy family had roots in the Nantucket
whaling industry and was mentioned in Herman Melville's "Moby Dick."

Mr. Thorndike attended the Charles River School, Fessenden School, and
St. Paul's School, and graduated from Harvard College in 1935. He
remained an active alumni.

Growing up, Mr. Thorndike and his three siblings spent part of many
years with their parents in Dunard, France, on the sea in Provence in
a house built by their artist grandfather. The experience made Mr.
Thorndike a lifelong Francophile and a fluent French speaker.

In Boston in the 1950s and '60s, Mr. Thorndike was president of the
former Home for Aged Women and would dress up as Santa Claus every
Christmas to distribute gifts to its residents. One year a resident
blew his cover by whipping off his cap and exposing his bald head.

Mr. Thorndike's first wife, Lucy Saltonstall Rantoul Thorndike, died
in 1958. His daughter said he became "both mother and father" to his
children, attending all school functions.

Mrs. Thorndike had been a founding member of The American Negro
Ballet, one of the first black ballet companies in the United States,
and her husband continued that commitment for many years and was an
early trustee of the Boston Ballet.

In 1960, Mr. Thorndike married Mary Mercy Bours Archibald, who died
four years ago. Mr. Thorndike shared his second wife's support of the
Jacksonville (Fla.) Symphony Orchestra. His financial support allowed
the symphony to complete its season this year. The day after Mr.
Thorndike's death, the orchestra played a planned concert dedicated to
him.

Mr. Thorndike was also a benefactor of the Mayo Clinic, where a
laboratory is dedicated to him and his second wife.

Prior to moving to Florida permanently two years ago, he summered in
Manchester and wintered in Florida.