John D “Jack” Fairchild

John D. “Jack” Fairchild, died December 27, 2021, at Cokesbury Village, where he and his wife, Bonnie, lived since 2005. Born in Upper Montclair, N.J., in 1932, as a youth he lived in Utah and Connecticut before his family moved to Wilmington. He graduated from St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, Delaware, in 1950 and began college at the University of Delaware. He and his first wife, Patricia Walters, had two sons before moving to Washington DC, where a third son was born. Jack worked as a patent draftsman and later an examiner at the U.S. Patent Office while earning a BA from American University. The growing family moved to Detroit, Michigan, where a fourth son was born, and Jack earned a Juris Doctorate from the University of Detroit School of Law, becoming a member of the Michigan Bar.

In 1963 he began a 34-year career specializing in patent and trademark litigation at the Wilmington law firm Connolly, Bove & Lodge. Before he retired in 1997, he was often seen walking the three miles between his Brecks Lane home and his downtown Wilmington office. He was a staunch conservative, reluctant to embrace newfangled technology such as computers, cell phones and texting. For many years he served on the board and as president of the Brecks Lane Association and the Port Herman Beach Condominium in Maryland. Later he was president of the Cokesbury Village Residents Association.

He was an old-school lawyer with artistic talents. From childhood, Jack had a natural talent for sketching. He became an expert at making detailed pen and ink drawings, giving them as gifts and displaying them at Cokesbury.

In 2012, Jack wrote a three-page synopsis of his life asking to be remembered as a man who most enjoyed being a reliable provider and counselor to those for whom he cared.

His survivors are sons, Andrew of Wilmington, Thomas (Laura) of Wilmington, and Bill (Paula) of Renton, Wash.; stepdaughters Joyce Wood (Gregory) of Odenton, Md. and Valerie Opsal of Wilmington. He is also survived by eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

In 1995 he and Bonnie, who also survives him, arranged for their ashes to be interred with his parents at Gracelawn Memorial Park, DuPont Highway, New Castle, Del. Services were held privately.