In Memoriam
Alexander M. Hehmeyer
September 18, 2026
On this date we were notified by his son Alex that Alex Hehmeyer ’64 had passed away on August 15, 2026. Below are the following remembrances:
Obituary
Alex’s obituary will be posted here when available.
Essay, 60th Reunion Book
by Alex Hehmeyer
May 2024
Alex Hehmeyer
1964 Yale graduation
We have reached the 80-years-old milestone and are no strangers to life’s lessons. We have experiences with life, death, health, family, work, social activities, travel, and friendships. I’ll summarize a few of my experiences since our 50th.
My wife Carol and I have been married for 54 years. She retired some years ago as an Assistant District Attorney in San Francisco, but continued to provide pro bono legal services. She has had various medical issues, but her hardest struggle is with Alzheimer’s. Fortunately she is cheerful and still relatively high-functioning. After my being the sole caregiver (highly stressful) for a couple of years, we transitioned and she is living in an excellent memory-care facility. I visit several times a week. I am glad that we did not defer having experiences along the way, including family activities and travel, so there are many happy memories that I and the others in the family have, even though she no longer shares most of them.
Alex Hehmeyer
in recent years
We have two sons in their forties and five grandchildren: four teenage boys and a four-year-old girl. We see them as often as we can, especially the son and his family living fairly close to us. We are in Concord, California.
This year I convinced each son to accompany me on a separate European river cruise; one down the Danube and the other down the Rhine. I kept up on shore excursions with them and the other passengers (who were probably around 60), so my twice a week personal training exercise program paid off. I still have a ways to go, though.
I made the life-style choice very recently to move to an apartment in a senior living/assisted living facility close to where Carol is. I made the right choice. It is much better than living alone.
I have been generally healthy. I do have, like many of us, metal and plastic knees and one hip, and new eye lenses. I had a bout with skin cancer and surgeries (too much sun exposure growing up), and my irregular heartbeat is permanent.
I only fully retired last year, on August 1, 2022. That was the closing date for the very timely sale of the software company The Danville Group, dba Rootstock Software, to the private-equity company, Gryphon Investors. I was the nonexecutive Chairman of the Board from 2008, the year it was started by the founder and CEO, Pat Garrehy. Rootstock Software is comprehensive, cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning software built on the Salesforce Platform, and is used by manufacturing, distribution, and other companies.
I have also, as a volunteer, mentored several startups and startup teams in business planning and early stage company fundraising competitions, such as those sponsored by Rice, the University of Michigan, and UC Davis.
I look forward to our 60th and, among other activities, discussing current political and social issues. I assume that we all still remember when intellectual diversity and principled, fact-based debate and true First Amendment rights were respected.
Essay, 50th Reunion Book
by Alex Hehmeyer
May 2014
We who were born during WWII are the scouts for the Baby Boomers. There is arguably a greater generation gap between the Classes of 1964 and 1969 than there is between the Classes of 1935 and 1964. In the five years after June 1964 we had the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that authorized the horrific escalation of the Vietnam war, the implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, student unrest in many other places, the Summer of Love in San Francisco, Woodstock, women admitted as Yale undergraduates, the rise of the Hippies and the drug culture, and changes in fashion and personal appearance.
I was born and raised in New York City. My father was a partner at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. My mother was an artist (a graduate of Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris) and was active in studying comparative religions and spiritual healing. I have one sibling, a younger sister. We lived in a high-rise apartment in Washington Square, in Greenwich Village. I went to day school (from K-9) at Friends Seminary, a co-ed school with small classes (about 25). Among my classmates were Neil Mitchell and Roger Weil (both Yale ’64) and John Avlon (Yale ’65). My parents were very permissive about letting me roam around New York. It was a bit of a shock to then go to a somewhat monastic and restrictive prep school (Choate) for three years. Many of the Choate class of 1960 matriculated at Yale.
I decided I wanted to go to law school at a state university, and was admitted to the University of Virginia and UC Berkeley. I was leaning towards UVA but, urged on by Neil Mitchell, I decided to go to Berkeley. We shared a Berkeley apartment with Roberto Bonetti ’64 (who studied civil engineering). I literally stepped over Mario Savio at Sather Gate as the Free Speech movement started.
If I had gone to UVA I never would have met my wonderful wife, Carol, and had our great sons.
All of us have had to make similar future life-deciding decisions. I don’t play “what if” or “if only.” I do often say “thank goodness.” I look forward, almost never backward, except to learn lessons from prior mistakes and relive memories of prior successes.
I became an associate at the largest San Francisco law firm in 1967, but later decided that I preferred to be in business and went to Sutro & Company (which was not a client), where I ran several divisions. I met Richard Blum there and I joined him as he started his private equity firm in 1981. I worked with him until 1994, so I also got to know his wife, Dianne Feinstein, and learned a lot about politics. I have been an entrepreneur and C-Level executive (education and training and other service companies, and enterprise software). The details are on LinkedIn.
I enjoy mentoring and being in the software business, and don’t plan to formally retire.