Andrew Robert Wechsler – 50th Reunion Essay

Andrew Robert Wechsler

Date of Death: 12-Jun-2004

College: Silliman

(This memorial was published in the Washington Post on June 30, 2004.)

Andrew Robert “Drew” Wechsler, an economist who had been an adviser to the US International Trade Commission, died June 12 at his home in Bethesda of cholangiocarcinoma, or cancer of the bile duct.

Since 1991, Mr. Wechsler was managing director of international practices with LECG, a legal and economic consulting firm in Washington. He was a specialist in analyzing international trade, criminal price fixing, mergers, intellectual property, and the international “dumping” of goods below their market value.

From 1987 to 1991, he was senior vice president and director of international trade for Economists Inc., a Washington consulting firm. He was senior economic adviser to the International Trade Commission from 1979 to 1987, supervising more than 400 studies of international trade policy.

Mr. Wechsler was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up on Long Island. He graduated from Yale University in 1969 and was one of the leaders of Yale’s antiwar movement during the Vietnam era. He taught high school chemistry and physics in New Haven, Connecticut, Freeport, New York, and Baltimore from 1969 to 1972.

He studied economics for two years at Uppsala University in Sweden and received a master’s degree in economics from Stanford University. At Stanford in the 1970s, he helped lead anti-apartheid demonstrations protesting the university’s investments in South Africa. Mr. Wechsler was fluent in Swedish and had traveled to more than 60 countries. After moving to Washington in the late 1970s, he founded the Reed-Cooke Neighborhood Association in Adams Morgan. He lived in Bethesda for the past nine years.

His marriage to Anne Spalding ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 12 years, Christine Wechsler of Bethesda; two children from the second marriage, Joshua and Sarah Kate Wechsler, both of Bethesda; his father, Herbert Wechsler of Greensboro, North Carolina; and two brothers.

From the 25th Reunion Class Book: “I am alive…married…gainfully employed…indeed prosperous… happy…vote…concerned about what I ingest…have not been arrested in almost twenty years…look forward to growing older. None of these astonishing events and feelings were anticipated when I left Yale. The world has changed so much that I now plan to return the copy of Marx’s German Ideology that I have had out on one-hour loan from L&B since 1969. The greatest disappointment is that the world remade our generation even more so than the reverse. It is also probably our greatest fortune.”