Tor Birger Arneberg's Obituary
Tor Birger Arneberg, an Olympic medalist, avid sportsman and business entrepreneur who served for more than a decade on the board of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, died Sept. 23 following a lengthy illness. He was 87.
A man of tremendous integrity, Mr. Arneberg grew up in Oslo, Norway, where he spent summers sailing the Oslo fjord and winters skiing the country’s glacial slopes. He was a 1950 graduate of Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H., where he was captain of the ski team and lauded in a college production as “the man to watch” and “one of the finest skiers on the Dartmouth squad.” He was the last recipient of the Bradley Plate, awarded to an outstanding athlete in all four skiing disciplines.
A true sportsman, Mr. Arneberg also competed in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, winning a silver medal for Norway in the 6-metre class sailing the Elisabeth X, after which he would name his first-born child. He graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School the following year.
It was during his trans-Atlantic journey home to Norway that he met his future wife, Jean Marie Overhysser, a Hartford, Ct. native. The two were wed in Oslo on October 16, 1954.
In 1959, Mr. Arneberg moved his family to the United States, where he landed a job selling plastic bags for the Kordite Corp. He obtained his U.S. citizenship in 1967, and shortly thereafter, joined the Xerox Corp., quickly rising through the executive ranks to become Director of Marketing. In 1975, he became a partner at AgTek International, a commercial tuna fishing venture with global reach. And in 1982, he joined Nightingale & Associates, a management consulting firm, as a partner.
During that time, he brokered numerous private equity deals for Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and was named to the Board of Directors in November 1988, where he served as chairman of the company’s Audit, Stock Options and Compensation Committees.
Mr. Arneberg also served on the Board of Directors of Precision Manufacturing Co., in Springfield Vt., and was an Executive Trustee and Vice President of the American Scandinavian Foundation.
His true passion, though, was athletics. More than once, Mr. Arneberg proclaimed that he wanted a single word on his tombstone: Sportsman. A member and Commodore of the Noroton Yacht Club in Darien, Ct., as well as the Royal Norwegian Yacht Club (KNS) in Oslo, Mr. Arneberg was an avid sailor and downhill skier throughout his life. He excelled at tennis and paddle tennis, and later in life, even took up golf. With sparkling blue eyes and a shock of white hair, the ladies called him the “Silver Fox”.
In 1971, he settled with his family in Darien, Ct., with requisite views of Long Island Sound, and eventually built a home in Woodstock, Vt., on the crest of a mountain overlooking the Ottauquechee River valley near his beloved Dartmouth. Mr. Arneberg relocated to Belleair, Florida in 2012, as his health began to fail. In addition to his wife of 61 years, Mr. Arneberg is survived by three daughters, Elisabeth Phillips of Belleair, Fl., Marianne Arneberg of Orlando, Fl., and Karin Hathaway of Norwich, Vt.; six grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and six nieces and nephews in Norway, with whom he retained close family ties.
In remembrance of Mr. Arneberg’s celebrated life, his family asks that in lieu of flowers or a memorial, donations be made to the American Scandinavian Foundation, 58 Park Ave., N.Y., N.Y. 10016.
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