William Waldron, 95; lawyer worked for Peabody, FDR

"I remember when Christmas came around, everyone would send cases of Scotch, big boxes full of food, all kinds of holiday good things, worth in those days several thousand dollars," said his son, Arthur of Bryn Mawr, Pa. "I remember well saying, 'Gee, Daddy, this is great, we're getting all these free things.' And he said, 'No, you don't understand, I can't accept this because I'm a public servant. And I can't send it back because it will insult the sender.' So he sat there writing checks. He wrote personal checks to cover everything, and he was not a wealthy man."

Mr. Waldron, a lawyer who also served in the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was general counsel for Massachusetts General Hospital, died of heart failure on April 29 in The Quadrangle, a retirement community in Haverford, Pa. He was 95.

"Bill Waldron evoked the spirit of the best of the 'Eastern Establishment,' " Robert Whitcomb, editorial page editor and vice president of The Providence Journal, wrote in a tribute.

Saying Mr. Waldron was a mentor and "a kind of alternative father to me, especially as I set forth, with innumerable bumps, on adult life," Whitcomb called him "a distinguished public servant going back to FDR days. I remember him as a stout liberal during much of his life, but one who expressed increasing skepticism about ideological solutions as he aged."

Said Mr. Waldron's son: "He was an old-fashioned liberal in that he believed in good government and that sort of thing."

During World War II, Mr. Waldron served in the Roosevelt administration on the National War Labor Board, in Washington, D.C., and in New York City.

"He very much identified with the New Deal," his son said. "One of the topics of discussion between the two of us through the years was, 'What do we make of Roosevelt?' "

William Augustus Waldron was born in Schenectady, N.Y., where his father was a history professor at Union College.

"He went away as a scholarship boy to the Taft School," his son said.

After Mr. Waldron graduated in 1931 from Taft, a private boarding school in Watertown, Conn., he returned home and went to Union College, graduating in 1935.

Later, he moved to Boston and Cambridge, his son said, graduating from what is now Harvard's Kennedy School of Government with a master's in political economy, and then from Harvard Law School.

When World War II began, "he was blind in one eye and could not serve, so he worked in Washington and New York for FDR," his son said.

Returning to Cambridge after the war, he began practicing law and eventually moved his family to Wayland in the early 1950s.

His first marriage, to Gertrude L. Nelson of Chestnut Hill, ended in divorce. He later married Sybil Jay Kinnicutt of Cambridge, who died in 1997.

"Bill was also a distinguished lawyer in assorted top-notch Boston law firms (what we used to call 'white-shoe firms')," Whitcomb wrote.

"A man of great charm, he was also a superb raconteur, with a marvelously mellow voice, and a provider of superb advice over the decades - with the right combination of practicality and idealistic encouragement."

In a draft he prepared for his own obituary, which recounted his career, Mr. Waldron noted that in 1953 he became executive director of the state's Special Commission on the Structure of State Government.

In the Peabody administration, Mr. Waldron was commissioner of administration, "in effect, deputy governor," Whitcomb wrote.

Mr. Waldron also was a special assistant attorney general, special counsel to the House of Representatives' committee of rules, and he formerly was chairman of Wayland's School Committee.

From 1975 until he retired in 1981, he worked with Massachusetts General Hospital, organizing the hospital's legal affairs and serving as general counsel.

Raised in a family with deep roots in New York State, Mr. Waldron "was really the first member of his family to break away," his son said.

"In that sense there was an element of boldness in his character. He found his own way, followed his own star."

Trim and tall, Mr. Waldron sliced through the crowds of Beacon Hill with his 6-foot-4-inch frame.

"He had an amazing stride," Whitcomb wrote.

"I remember struggling to keep up," Mr. Waldron's son recalled. "What saved me were the friends who would stop him for a quick chat."

In later years, Mr. Waldron lived in Bedford before moving to Haverford in 2000 to live closer to his son.

At The Quadrangle, where he spent his final years, Mr. Waldron kept reading history books and, even at the end, questioned and challenged authors from afar.

When he died, a book about the Mayflower was on his night stand, "and in about the middle of the book we found an underlining and a question mark, where he noted that the author had confused pilgrims and puritans," his son said.

Mr. Waldron's room was a gathering place where a half-dozen residents would drop by for a late afternoon drink to discuss issues.

"They called it 4:30 at 130, which was his room number," his son said. "There was a kind of graciousness in his dealings with everybody."

In addition to his son, Mr. Waldron leaves a daughter, Dorothy of Wellesley; two stepdaughters, Sybil Baldwin of Rhinecliff, N.Y., and May Houghton of Corning, N.Y.; a sister, Jessica N. Spacil of Seattle; and two grandsons.

Mr. Waldron, who donated his body to Temple Medical School, requested that no service be held.