James Totten Boorsch

BOORSCH, James Totten, loving and beloved brother, uncle, great-uncle, adoptive father and grandfather, and friend, of Hamden CT, died 3 July 2025.  Born 8 September 1934, Jim graduated from Exeter Academy, Yale College 1955, and Yale Law School 1958. Predeceased by parents Jean Boorsch and Louise Totten Boorsch, brother John Peter Boorsch, and sister Mary Louise Vogler, Jim is survived by sister Suzanne Boorsch and her husband, Allan Appel, sister-in-law Dorothea Dietrich, nieces Sophie Appel and her husband Geoffery Metz, their children Samuel Peter and Gabrielle Suzanne Appel-Metz, and Elizabeth Vogler, and nephew Nathaniel Appel and his fiancée Joanna Antisell, and adopted son Dylan Bruns, his wife Jennifer, and their children Jake Arlie and Kinsley Kelly Bruns. Jim worked at the law firm Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Roberts, and then for Mobil Oil International, 1970-90, spending 1973-76 in Tokyo as General Counsel/Director. During the 1990s he taught French and Constitutional Law at the Kent School, Kent CT. He served in the New York National Guard 1958-62. Jim was a frequent and generous host at his previous home in New Milford CT to nationwide and worldwide friends, and he also, in a friend’s words, kept up “treasured awesome email friendships.” Traveling was Jim’s great passion: between his first and last international trips, to France to celebrate his first birthday and meet his French grandparents, and at 87 to England with the Bruns family, whose children now have acute cases of the same travel “bug,” he visited 132 countries, as well as 49 of the 50 states. Donations in his memory would be appreciated, to Exeter, Yale College, or Yale Law School. Arrangements care of Beecher & Bennett Funeral Home, Hamden CT. To send a condolence to his family, please see: www.beecherandbennett.com.