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05/31/2013 11:00 AMJohn L. Armitage, 96, of Essex, formerly of Madison, New Jersey, and Morris Plains, New Jersey, died peacefully on May 14 in Middletown. John L. was born on July 24, 1916 on the kitchen table of his grandfather's house in Newark, New Jersey, the middle child and first son of the late Elwood Spencer Armitage and Adra Fitts Armitage. After graduating from Lawrenceville, he attended Princeton University, graduating in 1938. While in college, he met Karen Marie de Chambaud Conze of Greenwich when she was 16, and he married her on Sept 22, 1939. "After fifty-six years, I can still remember the white brilliance of her hair and slim tall figure at Princeton events," he wrote in his autobiography. The marriage of "Johnny and Connie," as they were dubbed in their engagement announcement by thirties social columnist Cholly Knickerbocker, lasted 55 years until her death in 1994.
In 1938, John L. joined John L Armitage & Company in Newark, New Jersey, a chemical coatings business started by his grandfather in 1876. Soon after Pearl Harbor, he left the family business to serve as an officer in the Army Chemical Warfare Service from 1942 to 1946. "I wasn't too sure I was going to make it," he wrote. He returned, and in 1949 he became president of John L Armitage & Company until he retired in 1982, and was succeeded by his son Norman S. Armitage, who still serves as president of the company in Gallatin, Tennessee.
John L. was active in the National Paint and Coatings Association (NPCA), where he served as both president and chairman (1972-1976). An avid reader in his nineties, he chronicled his life and times in Seventy Five and One-Half, a book for his grandchildren and generations thereafter. "I have lived for the better part of the Twentieth Century," he wrote. "It has been a remarkable century for the American Nation....If you look at the Twentieth Century, it has always been the unexpected that has made the greatest influence. I might only mention the electric light (his mother and Mrs. Edison were friends), the automobile (all those years selling paint to Detroit), World War I, the Depression, World War II and the atomic age as examples of the unexpected.... in terms of the expected and the unexpected...(the) unexpected wins out every time in terms of impact."
Besides his son Norman S., he is survived by three other children, Adra Carr of Old Saybrook, Spencer Leineweber of Honolulu, Hawaii, and Amelia Armitage of Ridgefield, as well as 12 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his sister Adra Fairman and his brother James D. Armitage, who worked closely with him in the family paint business.
His life will be celebrated by his family and close friends in a service which will be held on Sunday, June 23, at 1 p.m., at the First Congregational Church in Essex. His family requests that donations in his memory be made to the Weiss Hospice Unit, Middlesex Hospital, Office of Philanthropy, 28 Crescent St., Middletown, CT 06457. The Robinson, Wright & Weymer Funeral Home, Centerbrook, is in charge of arrangements.