Obituary of Alfred Blas Bourdon

Alfred Blas Bourdon

(b. January 4, 1953 d. January 30, 2026)

“He longest lives, who most to others gives, himself forgetting.”

Mr. Alfred Blas Bourdon was born in Manhattan in 1953, raised in Illinois and educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he earned a Juris Doctor in 1978. He retired from Parke-Davis, Warner-Lambert Company in 2000 as international counsel, after a professional life of global deal-making and started Cowrie Investments.

Home was Chester Township, in northern New Jersey, where soft green rolling hills and small horse farms are surrounded by the pointy leaves of red oak trees, which he loved.

He ran summer softball leagues for inner city children in Harlem, organized summer concert music festivals for the NYC Parks Department (booking Pete Seeger, Lou Donaldson, Herbie Mann and Dizzy Gillespie), served as a judge/poll watcher in Morris County, and practiced his faith at St. Joseph’s in Mendham. He was a stringer in Barcelona for AP and the NYTimes, and saw Johann Cruyff play for the Blaugrana at Nou Camp.

He was a film noir buff, Rafifi, his favorite. A dedicated Yankees fan (he saw Yogi Berra, Mantle, Maris and Whitey Ford play); he relished Yale football, Cole Porter tunes, Man Ray, Odilon Redon, Goya, and read Shakespeare all his life. He knew that José Saramago delivered the most magical Nobel Prize lecture in literature; that George Orwell was the most prescient political scientist of the 20th or any century; that Pablo Neruda was a protean poet, and that the indefatigable Robert Caro, revealed the sinews of American political power with his masterworks on Robert Moses and LBJ.

Above all, he prized the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Al's life was well spent, well lived and well travelled (he made his first transatlantic voyage at 16, from New York to Southampton/Le Havre, France on the M.V. Aurelia). He was a quicksilver conversationalist, met Salvador Dalí at Bar Pastis in Barcelona, was introduced to the statesman, Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore, and discussed upcoming programming of Sunday Morning on CBS with Charles Kuralt. At 63, he walked the northern route (over 500 miles) of El Camino on pilgrimage from the Basque Country to Santiago de Compostela.

He is survived by his spouse, Cecilia, daughter, Lauren Margaret Blas, son-in-law Trevor Porter Stutz, and granddaughters Marilyn Joy Stutz and Margot Victoria Stutz, all of whom he adored.

He was free, in a free country, who last felt the warmth of the sun on his face in the waning days of January.

Visitation will be held on Monday, February 16, from 9:30 AM to 11:30 AM at the Bailey Funeral Home, 8 Hilltop Road, Mendham, followed by a 12 noon Memorial Mass at St. Joseph Church (Chapel), W. Main Street, Mendham.