Dr. Huntington Sheldon, Doctor, Teacher, Racer, and Sheep Raiser

Huntington Sheldon, who came to live in Amagansett in 1937 with his mother and siblings, died on Dec. 29 at home in Shelburne, Vt., after a brief illness, his family said. He was 87.

Dr. Sheldon was a professor and researcher at McGill University in Montreal and was a pioneer in the study of electron microscopy while working at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. 

In addition to his medical and teaching career, he was a coach for the Canadian cross-country ski  team in the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck in 1976 and Lake Placid in 1980, as well as a successful sail racer and competitive sheep breeder.

After retiring from McGill in 1985, he spent the next 25 years raising purebred Suffolk sheep. Amagansett remained his summer home throughout his life, and where he had begun raising sheep some years before with the help of Alan Walcott, who took care of the Sheldons’ grounds on Atlantic Avenue. With Mr. Walcott, he would show his sheep at the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield, Mass., winning best in show for many years running.

He was born on Jan. 4, 1930, in New York City to Magda M. and Huntington D. Sheldon. When he was 6, his father left the family, and he and his brother, Peter, and sister, Audrey, moved to a house that had been owned by Joshua B. Edwards on Atlantic Avenue. He remembered well being sent home from the Amagansett School on Sept. 21, 1938, as what would become known as the Great New England Hurricane raged around him, toppling trees. He went on to the East Hampton School and then to the Brooks School in Andover, Mass.

The Amagansett property was gradually added to and turned into a farm, where the family raised chickens, cows, goats, and kept ponies. Much later, in the 1970s, Dr. Sheldon had a seasonal you-pick strawberry operation there. He also planted mulberries, in order to grow leaves with which to feed silkworms that he kept for study of their silk in Montreal.

He received an undergraduate degree from McGill as a Markle Scholar and a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. His medical residency was at Johns Hopkins in pathology.

His summers were always spent in Amagansett, where he had learned to sail as a child at the Devon Yacht Club. He continued gardening, turning a handful of fingerling potatoes he had been given by the chef Pierre Franey into a crop that in subsequent growing seasons was sold at the Barefoot Contessa shop in East Hampton Village.

“He loved that property beyond any other property,” his wife, Del Sheldon, said. “Amagansett meant more to him than anything other than his family.” Dr. Sheldon’s academic honors were many, including the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars, Distinguished Alumnus, and Distinguished Medical Alumnus, and he was a founder of the Institute of Basic Biomedical Sciences there. He was named to the university’s board of trustees in 1995, a position he retained until the end of his life. He was also a 60-year member of the University Club of New York.

While living in Montreal, Dr. Sheldon enjoyed cross-country skiing in the Laurentian Mountains. He was president of the Viking Ski Club and chairman of the Canadian Ski Association. He raced as well, taking part in the Vasaloppet, Finlandia, and Birkebeiner competitions.

In Vermont, he was one of the region’s first certified organic farmers and was instrumental in forming the Charlotte Land Trust in the early 1990s.

He continued to sail nearly all his life. After his retirement, he competed in and several times was aboard winning boats in the Transatlantic, Fastnet, Newport to Bermuda, Middle Sea, and Sydney-Hobart races.

He also spent several summers cruising in the high latitudes of Scandinavia with his family, including a voyage above the Arctic Circle to Spitsbergen, Norway, in 1996. Dr. Sheldon was a member of the New York Yacht Club, the Royal Ocean Racing Club, and was an honorary commodore of the Royal Swedish Yacht Club.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his daughters — Greta Sheldon of Venice, Calif., and Zoe Sheldon of Berkeley, Calif., and from an earlier marriage, Karan Sheldon of Milton, Mass., and Jennifer Sheldon of Bozeman, Mont., and eight grandchildren. His brother, who lives in Windham, Me., survives; his sister died in 1979.

A private burial will be held in the spring.

Memorial donations have been suggested to the Charlotte Land Trust, P.O. Box 43, Charlotte, Vt. 05445.