Tutor Funeral Home

He was born Sept. 26, 1931, in Jersey City, N.J., a son of Edmund and Elizabeth (Meehan) Dornburgh.Bill attended Jersey City public schools, where he was high school class president. He received a BS degree in economics from Saint Peter’s College in 1954, where he said the Jesuits had left an indelible Catholic mark on his life, as he put it, “warts and all.”He enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves in 1951, served at Parris Island and received an honorable discharge in 1952. He then earned an MBA in finance from Seton Hall University in 1964.After his father died in 1936, Bill and his brothers spent summers on the family farm in Middlefield, which led to a lifelong love affair with Cooperstown. He worked summers at The Cooper Inn and The Otesaga from 1947 to 1953.During those summers he met Patricia Ann Butler, a Native Daughter of Cooperstown who became “the essence of his existence.” They were married at St. Mary’s “Our Lady of the Lake” Roman Catholic Church in June 1954, a marriage that lasted 60 years, seven months and two days. They raised their family in Glen Ridge, N.J.Bill was an officer of the Bank of New York in New York City, and was subsequently a senior vice president of UJB Financial Corp. in Princeton, N.J., from which he retired in 1994. He was president of UJB Leasing Corp., and had also been an adjunct assistant professor of economics at St. Peter’s College for 10 years.He also served as chairman of the Board of Governors of West Hudson Hospital in Kearney, N.J., and was a member of the Board of Directors of Accel International Corp. in Dublin, Ohio.Before he and Patricia retired to Cooperstown, he volunteered as a tutor at a Newark, N.J., elementary school where he said he learned more that he taught.In 1973, Bill and Patricia purchased a portion of the old Hinman/Dornburgh family farm in Middlefield, where they built a small summer cottage which they redesigned into their retirement home in 1995. They resided there until they moved into the Village...