The Rev. Burton Allan MacLean died in the early morning of Wednesday, Jan. 12 at his residence in Pomfret, Conn. He was 94.

Reverend MacLean was born in Batavia, N.Y. on April 13, 1916, the fourth child of Charles Chalmers and Elizabeth Dreyfus MacLean.

After graduating from Batavia High School in 1933, he attended and graduated from the Taft School in 1934 where he was an undefeated member of the varsity wrestling team and a member of the varsity crew. He attended Yale University as a scholarship student where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 1938. As a student he was a member of the undergraduate board of deacons of Church of Christ, a member of the freshman football team, freshman and varsity crews, freshman and varsity Glee Club and in his senior year president of the Glee Club. He also was a member of the Whiffenpoofs and served on the 1938 class council. In 1942 he earned his B.D. from the Yale Divinity School.

The Charles MacLean family spent summers beginning in the 1920s on Murray Island in the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence River. It was at “The River” where Burton met the love of his life, Catharine Corson of Woranoco Island and Lockport, N.Y. After years of courtship he married Catharine on Sept. 20 1939. Burton and Catharine spent the next many decades raising eight children while sharing a career in the ministry and education.

After graduating from Yale Divinity School, he served as an industrial missionary under the Board of National Missions of the Presbyterian Church in Detroit, Michigan. From 1944 through 1946 he served as U.S. Army Chaplain in the 3rd Battalion, 303 Infantry and 97th Division, serving both in the European and Pacific theatres of World War II. He also served as a captain in the U.S. Army Reserves until 1949. He was appointed assistant dean of the Chapel at Princeton University in 1946. Yale University appointed him associate pastor, Church of Christ in 1949 where he was also contemporaneously director of Undergraduate Religious Affairs and associate university chaplain. In 1959 he was appointed headmaster of Iolani School in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 1970 he was named president of the American School of Paris, and in 1977 he became headmaster of the Pomfret School, from which he retired in 1979. During his professional life, he was a member of the Headmaster Association, the National Association of Secondary Schools, the National Association of Secondary Schools, and served as president of the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools.

After retiring in 1979, Burton and Catharine continued to live in Pomfret, Conn., in the winter and in the summers at their river stone house on Tibbets Point in Cape Vincent, N.Y., which they loved to share with their grandchildren. Since 2000, they spent summers in Clayton, N.Y., closer to the summer homes of two of their sons where they could visit with greater frequency their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Burton and Catharine loved all their children and greatly enjoyed life and succeeding generations. In their 70s they adopted a Labrador retriever named Coco with whom they took long walks. In their 80s they built a sailing pram and as avid sportsmen enjoyed rowing, canoeing and sailing on their beloved river. Once a Whiffenpoof always a performer, Burton sang and danced throughout his life both on and off the stage. Just hours before his death, he sang to his nurse, caregiver and family. He rode his bike until he was 85.

Burton was predeceased by Catharine in 2007 and was cared for in the last two years of his life by his attentive daughter, Mary Dexter MacLean. He is survived by eight children, Burton A. MacLean Jr. and his wife Charlotte of Haverford, Pa., and Wolfe Island, Ont., Katharine MacLean Crane and her husband Philippe of Chevy Chase, Md., and Belmont, Vt., John Chalmers MacLean and his wife Polly of Ashfield and Club Island, N.Y., Mary D. MacLean of Pomfret, Conn., Thomas C. MacLean of Frankfort, Ky., Peter Charles MacLean and his wife Elizabeth of Oak Bluffs, Henry Phelps Mac-Lean of Milton and Robert Sydney MacLean of Oak Bluffs; and a nephew, Ken MacLean of Oak Bluffs. He is also survived by 15 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 22 at Christ Episcopal Church in Pomfret, Ct. There will also be a memorial service in the summer of 2011 at “The River,” Clayton, N.Y.