Archibald Stevens Alexander

Archibald (Archie) Stevens Alexander, 83, died at his home in Bozeman, Montana on November 28, 2016, after a protracted battle with cancer and muscular dystrophy.



Archie was born in 1933 in New York City to Archibald Stevens Alexander and Susanne Tilton Alexander. Susanne died when Archie was very young. His father then married Jean Struthers Sears. Archie graduated from St. Paul’s School, Princeton University (1955), and Harvard Law School (1960). From 1955 to 1957, he served as a first lieutenant with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. After graduating from law school, he spent a year as law clerk for Joseph Weintraub, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New Jersey. The following year Archie worked in the Ivory Coast as a M.I.T. Fellow, assisting the transition to constitutional government. He travelled often to France to spend time with his sister Helen and her husband Alain Prevost. In their company, he developed a love of French culture, language, and cuisine that would last a lifetime.



On February 15, 1964, he married Eleanor (Nina) Hallowell Lapsley in Princeton, New Jersey. Together, they had three children: Benjamin, Jocelyn, and Christopher. In New Jersey, he worked at the Newark law firm of Lum Biunno & Tompkins and then the firm of Lowenstein, Sandler, Brochin, Kohl & Fisher. During his years as an attorney Archie served on the New Jersey Commission on Civil Rights. From 1968 to 1974, he chaired the Board of Managers of the New Jersey State Prison System, where he passionately advocated for correctional reform to better protect prisoners’ rights at a time of great conflict within the prison system. In that role, he helped to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the Rahway Prison Riot in 1971. Later he taught at Rutgers University Law School where he created a seminar on providing civil legal services to state prison inmates.



In 1977, Archie moved with his family to Bozeman, Montana where he began a new phase in life and developed his love of the outdoors. He embraced hunting, hiking, cycling, and cross-country skiing. In 1978 he and his family built a house at the base of the Bridger Mountains on an old homestead site with an apple orchard dating to 1904. He derived immense satisfaction from expanding the orchard and battling its enemies, from bears to fire blight.



Archie joined the faculty of Montana State University’s College of Business, where he taught business law and management. He also taught in the Honors Program, sharing and passing on his love of the humanities and his passion for critical thinking, notably through the works of Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzsche. Archie served on the Gallatin County Planning Board, the Gallatin County Open Space Task Force, and the Gallatin County Open Lands Board. He was instrumental in the creation of the Middle Cottonwood Zoning District and in passing the county’s first open lands bond. After retirement he represented the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in a successful legal effort to obtain authorization for a public high school in Lame Deer, Montana. He secured federal funding to build the school, in which Northern Cheyenne language and culture is included in the curriculum today.



Archie was a descendant of John Stevens, one of the original New Jersey settlers to receive a land grant from Queen Anne in 1699. The Stevens family of Hoboken founded the Stevens Institute of Technology. The Alexanders were eighteenth-century immigrants from Scotland. They included a long line of Presbyterian ministers, and the first professor of the Princeton Theological Seminary, established in 1812.



Archie is survived by his wife, Nina; his children Benjamin (Sarah) Alexander of Bozeman, Jocelyn Alexander of Oxford, UK, and Christopher (Alanna) Alexander of Dallas, Texas; two granddaughters, Anna and Reeve Alexander of Bozeman; sisters Helen Prevost of St. Loup, France and Susan Lodge of Beverly, Massachusetts; and many nieces and nephews.



A service will be held on Friday, December 2, 2016, at 3:00 PM at the Pilgrim Congregational United Church. Memorial contributions will be gladly received by the Southern Poverty Law Center.