Richard Stoner Strickler, a lawyer who was General Patent Counsel of Cities Service Company, the oil and gas firm headquartered in New York City and then Tulsa, OK. and who served as president of a company that was an early pioneer in the development of facsimile machines, died Wednesday, (December 20, 2006) at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown. His death was the result of complications relating to a brain seizure. He was 86. Mr. Strickler directed the patent operations of Cities Service and was vice president of Cities Service Research and Development Company from 1973 until 1979, a period when rising oil prices due to the 1973 OPEC oil embargo made new technologies for finding and recovering oil deposits particularly valuable. Prior to joining Cities Service, he was president of Phonocopy Inc., a development venture of Olin Corporation that sought to perfect and commercialize the transmission of paper photocopies by telephone, technology that led to the now familiar fax machine. Born in Williamsport, PA. on January 28, 1920, Mr. Strickler attended Syracuse University and graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, with the class of 1945. He was assigned to convoy patrol duty in the North Atlantic during World War II. Trained as a mechanical and electrical engineer, Mr. Strickler received his law degree from the University of Maryland in 1952. He was a patent lawyer for Western Electric Company, Borg-Warner Corporation and then Olin, where he became Director of Patents in the mid-1960s. Later in his 46-year legal career, he was patent counsel for the American Can Company and the Schick Division of Warner-Lambert Corporation and was associated with the intellectual property firm of Bachman & LaPointe in New Haven for the 14 years prior to his retirement in 1998. Mr. Strickler, a resident of Killingworth for 28 years until just before his death, was an active proponent of land preservation. He created conservation easements on his own land in favor of the Killingworth Land Conservation Trust to serve as models of how wildlife and open space might be protected against residential real estate development. During most of his retirement Mr. Strickler was a volunteer driver for Meals on Wheels. He was an avid hiker and outdoorsman and was a member of the Madison Rod and Gun Club in Killingworth.He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Joan, of Chester; their son, Richard, Jr., of Charlottesville, VA; their two daughters, Susan, of Manchester, NH, and Sarah, of Arlington, VA; a sister, Mary Jane Leader, of Hummelstown, PA; a brother, Byron of York, PA; and two grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are private. Memorial contributions may be made to Killingworth Land Conservation Trust, P.O. Box 825, Killingworth, CT 06419.
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Hartford Courant, The (CT) - Sunday, December 24, 2006