Dan Dimanescu

Dan Dimancescu, who has died age 81, came from a long line of storytellers, and throughout a long, well-lived, lively, and engaging eight decades, he excelled in inspiring people to go out into the world and to be curious explorers, not passive observers of life. He excelled in bringing people together from different countries, faiths, backgrounds, and ethnicities, and they in turn shared their countries, their thoughts, and their ways of looking at the world with others in productive engaging settings which culminated in worthwhile fusions of principles, business practices, conservation initiatives, and collaborations.

If ever an adage were to be applied to Dan’s life it would be one of his favorite sayings, “One thing leads to another.” This sentiment is reflected by the fact that when Dan sat down to write the first volume of his memoirs, he selected One Thing Leads To Another as the most suitable title. What he chose to state on the book’s back cover, which he self-published in the autumn of 2020, offers readers a small glimpse into how Dan viewed the course of his life, much of which had been spent exploring and navigating vast expanses of the world’s lands and seas: “This is a memoir of a young emigrant to the U.S. who applied to an Ivy League college simply on mistaken recognition of the name ‘Dartmouth.’ The few short years there and the answer to a surprisingly simple question ‘How much time do you waste every day?’ affected much else in his life on four continents: adventure, cartography, urban affairs, high-tech consulting, teaching ancient cultures, filmmaking, nature conservation, associating with billionaires and princes — and a return to his parents’ homeland: Romania. Punctuating his accounts are snapshots of events that shaped the post-WWII world.”

When pondering the distinct and vibrant chapters of Dan’s life, what stands out is that at no time was his curiosity and creativity constrained or hindered by what William Blake once described in his poem “London” as “mind-forg’d manacles.” Rather, Dan was always an expansive thinker who excelled in uniting and blending ideas, people, techniques, and organizational styles from different disciplines and cultures while at the same time introducing novel ways of approaching and understanding long-standing practices, institutions, and methods of teaching. He was a voracious reader who generously and succinctly even in his last days shared an ever-expanding wealth of ideas, information, and perspectives about an ever-changing world.

Dan was first and foremost a global citizen who strove to cultivate beneficial local, regional, and international collaborations when working on rewilding projects, co-authoring books, creating and producing original documentary films, and working on historic preservation projects. His office was always a wondrous center of activity teeming with the sounds of his favorite songs, photographs of National Geographic expeditions he had participated in, model ships he carefully and joyfully constructed, reference books in different languages which he adored returning to time and again to glean new insights, dozens of his own thoughtfully written books (some co-authored with leading experts in various disciplines and others self-published), scripts for documentary projects past, present, and future, and mementos of rewarding world travels nestled alongside childhood photos of his children Katie and Nick and childhood drawings and pieces they made in art classes over the years.

Dan made everyone he met and worked know that their opinions and contributions were worthy and equally valued. He existed in a world of possibilities where a seize-the-day spirit coupled with a willingness and the momentum to find novel ways of doing things won the day. He was not one to ruminate on how and why something could not be done or whether it should be questioned. When faced with challenges big and small he might choose to seek alternative opinions and options or he might propose, present, and enact an entirely new way of doing something.

Over the course of his life, he worked in many different professional roles and served on many nonprofit boards both in the U.S. and overseas. At the time of his death, he was the head of Kogainon Films, a documentary film production company that he and his son Nicholas (Nick) co-founded in 2008 when Nick was 23 years old. He was a producer intimately involved in the production of and the forthcoming debut of a documentary about the historic town of Concord and slavery, which will have its first screenings in Concord in early April 2025.

In the years before and after the birth of his two children, Dan was the founder and president of Technology and Strategy Group (TSG). He was a management consultant working Fortune 500 manufacturing and high-tech firms including Boeing, Procter & Gamble, Trane, and Digital Equipment. In the mid- to late 1970s when he and his wife Katherine were residing in Charlestown close to the Bunker Hill Monument, Dan commuted to and from his Cities Corp. company in the heart of Harvard Square, where his earlier company Cities, Inc. was previously based.

Dan was never one to simply sit idly by. He always had a fresh pad of paper and a pen close at hand for writing down intriguing thoughts and ideas and questions which came to mind in moments when he was basking in the sun in the garden, by a river, or a hillside in Romania. Ideas, words, new ways of envisioning and incorporating a rewilding project or the reintroduction of native species to an environment from which they had been long absent were always flowing through him.

Over the years, warm and wonderful lasting memories were made with family and friends as Dan delighted in sharing beautiful outdoor experiences on land and on the water in and around Hanover, N.H., which he first enjoyed when an undergraduate at Dartmouth College. As a high school student attending Hartford Public High School in Hartford, Conn., he spent countless hours bicycling around Connecticut, and this real-time training helped him become National Junior Sprint Racing (10th), Connecticut State Bicycling Champion (1960), and Eastern U.S. Sprint Racing Champion (1960).

There were invigorating and lasting memories made in all seasons in the quaint towns of Arlington, Vt., where Dan and his wife Katherine were married in 1976 and in nearby Dorset, Vt., where their early June wedding celebrations were unexpectedly showered with actual snowflakes, much to the delight and surprise of their wedding guests, who carried on merrily dancing and drinking with the newlyweds.

Before too long, more unexpected snowy memories were made when Dan and Katherine made the move from their fourth-floor walk-up apartment in Charlestown to a historic small town called Lincoln outside of Boston at exactly the same time that the infamous Blizzard of ’78 shut down vast swaths of the United States for days. Dan and Katherine made it safely to their new house in Lincoln but the moving truck with their belongings did not, so for the first few days in their new home, they found themselves camping out. When it was possible to travel in Harvard Square where they both worked, they had a delightful time catching up with friends who were enjoying cross-country skiing around Cambridge, and many epic snowy Lincoln and Cambridge photos were later shared with their children along with stories about the blizzard.

Lincoln was the backdrop for a multitude of wonderful outdoor experiences for Katie and Nick, who spent their childhood playing outdoors from sunup to sundown, whether it be sledding on a perfect sledding hill with Lincoln friends near a dairy farm in town, or out and about with a parent or trusted adult on one of many trails which crisscross Lincoln’s conservation land. During winter seasons when there was enough snow on the ground, sleigh rides were organized by Dan and Katherine for their family and friends with their children too.

Of all the places that Katie and Nick enjoyed being with their parents, two especially stand out: Marblehead, Massachusetts and Blue Hill, Maine. In Marblehead, countless weekends were spent running around Fort Sewall and dining in all seasons nearby at the Barnacle restaurant. Further from home in Blue Hill, summers spent with Katherine’s parents were enhanced by family hikes up Blue Hill Mountain with beloved collie dogs. Annual outings were made to the Blue Hill Fair, which inspired local author E.B. White to write Charlotte’s Web. There were extended family dinners at Eaton’s Lobster Pound, the Fourth of July parade in Brooklin, Maine, and trips to Bar Harbor and the iconic Jordan Pond House restaurant, though the highlight of being in Hancock County was being out on the water. Dan and Nick enjoyed getting out on the coastal waters around Blue Hill in Dan’s sea kayak, which he custom-made and used during a National Geographic expedition in the summer of 1985 to traverse a 500-mile route around the Korean islands from Mok’po to Pusan.

Overseas, worthwhile annual summer holidays were spent when Katie and Nick were young exploring the English, Welsh, and French countrysides during breaks in Dan’s overseas work schedules. A true travel highlight came in the form of a family holiday in June 1995 spent in England and Wales with family friends and their children, during which Dan became the expedition lead who organized and led a walk from the bed and breakfast where everyone was staying on trails to nearby Stonehenge. The breathtaking sight of truly ancient, mysterious, and awe-inspiring stones suddenly appearing on the horizon as the group approached on foot left indelible impressions.

Years later, Dan and Nick co-founded Kogainon Films,and committed themselves to chronicling and sharing poignant, informative, and soul-penetrating history and personal experiences from Romania’s history past. Each documentary presented its audience with remarkable stories of courage, valor, and personal sacrifices and also showcased how little is known my many about Romania’s long and rich history, which stretches back far earlier than the Roman Empire and encompassing so much more than Vlad the Impaler and Bram Stoker.

Peter Dan Dimancescu was born on March 22, 1943 in Maidenhead, England to Romanian parents, who at the time were raising their three older children in the English countryside in a household which alsi included a series of English spaniels. After his birth and subsequent baptism in London, Dan rarely went by his given first name of Peter and instead he answered to Dan. His parents raised their children in England for a period of years, having previously divided their family’s lives before the outbreak of the Second World War between homes in San Francisco, London, and Romania.

Dan’s father, Dimitri D. Dimancescu, was on the cusp of turning 47 when his youngest child, Dan, was born in the spring of 1943 outside of London. Dimitri and his brother both fought valiantly in the First World War as Romanian soldiers and Dimitri was instrumental in establishing the Boy Scouts in Romania. Dan’s mother Alexandra “Ze” (Radulescu) Dimancescu was in her early 30s when he was born; despite wartime deprivations and hardships, she and Dimitri did their utmost to impart a love and appreciation of Romania, its culture, and its history to their four children during the difficult and tumultuous war years when it was not possible to safely return to Romania to be with loved ones and to enjoy spending time in the home they made there after their marriage.

It may be said that early on Dan’s calling to be a navigator of life and the world around him, both for himself and others, revealed itself in some of his earliest childhood memories which he often shared with Katie and Nick. He clearly recalled being pushed in his pram by a British nanny along a country road near an ancient house in the English countryside where his family were residing. With crystal-clear clarity decades later, he recounted being in his pram and being actively engaged in studying the sky overhead, all while noting the sounds around him as well as actual conditions and contours of terrain of the country lane for future reference in his memory.

In early 1948 when Dan was five, his family bid farewell to England and moved to Marrakesh, Morocco, arriving there during the waning years of a period when the country was a French protectorate. Dan’s new life swiftly became marked by explorations of the souks in Marrakesh in the company of his older brothers Mihai, collecting and playing with marbles and his beloved Dinky toy cars, attending French schools run by nuns, family holidays to the Atlas Mountains and farther afield to Spain and Portugal, and nights spent tucked up in bed reading Tintin stories, copies of National Geographic magazine, and well-traveled and greatly loved vintage copies of the Illustrated London News, which had already been read and enjoyed by his father’s family for decades by the time of his birth.

All of these immersive literary adventures coupled with having lived in many different houses in two different countries by the age of 13 inadvertently prepared Dan for another huge life adventure which unfolded in 1956 when he and his brother Mihai sailed to the U.S. aboard a Yugoslavian freighter. They bid farewell their parents, who had to stay behind in Morocco to wait for their visas and official paperwork to come through so their family could be reunited in the U.S. Some of Dan’s happiest and most treasured memories were made after their arrival stateside, when he and Mihai lived with a beloved family friend in San Francisco in her Sea Cliff neighborhood house with its unobstructed breathtaking views of water, beach, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Life-long seeds of learning, interests, and curiosity were planted during the life-changing and transformative three-year period spent living in San Francisco. When he was not enjoying the company and taking in ideas and wisdom imparted by his parents’ family friends, Dan enjoyed activities such as skating at the now long-gone Sutro Baths.

William Shakespeare once wrote that “one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages,” and this is aptly characterizes Dan’s life and his many incredible adventures and ventures and his approach to life, for he did not believe that there was only one set career path for him; an instead he constantly fostered an expansive growth mindset and cultivated outreach opportunities, curiosity, exploration, and meaningful collaborations. When Dan was asked by his wife and daughter in his last year to describe how the course of his life had unfolded, he related the following: Born in England during WWII to Romania parents, Dan’s father was a decorated World War hero and career diplomat in the U.S. and the U.K. exiled to London during World War II. The post-war Communist takeover of Romania in December 1947 led the family to renewed exile in Marrakech, where they lived for eight years before emigrating to the U.S. in 1956.

He was awarded U.S. citizenship in 1961. Almost 45 years later, he was invited to have Romanian citizenship issued to him based on his family’s pre-Communist status. This allowed him to recover family properties (urban and rural) particularly on his maternal side whose boyar (landed aristocracy) ancestry traces back to the mid-1500s. This led to involvement in various Romanian NGOs, film and book production, and association with leading researchers of Romania culture and history. In 2005 he was designated Honorary Consul of Romania in Boston; later amended to Consul-General.

His education led him to Dartmouth College, graduate school at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Harvard/Tufts administered), and some years later, Harvard Business School. During his professional career, he served during sabbatical years as guest lecturer and/or titled faculty at Dartmouth’s engineering and business school, the Institute for Man & Technology at the University of Nantes (France), and Boston University’s business school. He was also a prolific author of more than twenty titles on technology policy, corporate management, Romanian history and culture as well as his latest on American Revolution-era slavery in Concord, published in 2025 as a companion book to an accompanying feature documentary he produced.

Most influential in shaping the course of his life was membership in Dartmouth’s Ledyard Canoe Club, founded in 1920 and named after John Ledyard, who enrolled at Dartmouth in 1772. Ledyard’s son departed the college to travel with Captain Cook on his third voyage and is known as the United States’ first genuine explorer. This inspired Dan to undertake four expeditions supported by National Geographic 1,700 miles by canoe on the Danube River (1964); traveling 1,000 miles by kayak along Japan’s Inland Sea and Pacific Coast (1966), hiking the 600-mile length of Romania’s Carpathian Mountains (1968), and doing 500 miles by kayak along South Korea’s island-dotted peninsula (1985).

Over subsequent years he followed a largely self-created professional life that spanned a number of disparate careers: freelance journalist for the Boston Globe covering Europe and Japan in the late 1960s; cartographer pioneering digital map drafting technology; urban planner influencing successful efforts to cancel inner-city highways in Boston; author/co-author of high tech semiconductor industry U.S. policy books; student of Japanese management know-how and consultant to Fortune 500 high-tech and manufacturing companies; and in the new millennium, co-founder of Kogainon Films.

Over the years he served on varied educational and nonprofit institutional boards, most recently the Foundation Conservation Carpathia (Romania), which focused on creating Europe’s largest nature park. Its internationally distinguished board includes Swiss-American billionaire Hansjoerg Wyss, known as the world’s largest donor to land conservation organizations.

When Sir Christopher Wren’s son chose an epitaph to grace the site of his father’s final resting in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, he chose these words, “Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice,” which means, “Reader, if you seek a monument, look around.” These timeless words resonate with Dan’s family for these words convey what it is like to be physically present in Romania taking in the country’s natural splendors, now-preserved and restored historic towns, villages, and buildings, and learning about the projects being undertaken by Romanian organizations Dan supported or helped establish. Dan’s life and legacy is embodied by Romania and it is there that his spirit has surely returned home.

Dan is survived by Katherine, his wife of 48 years, and their daughter Katie. His son Nick predeceased him in May 2011. He is also survived by his sister Sandra Kenny and brother Dr. Mihai Dimancescu. His brother Dimitri Dimancesco predeceased him, as did their parents Alexandra “Ze” and Dimitri D. Dimancescu and their maternal great-grandmother Greta (Bastea) Radulescu. Dan is also survived by many loving nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews, and cousins. He proudly called Lincoln and Concord home for decades and leaves behind wonderful friends and esteemed colleagues in both communities.

In lieu of flowers, donations to honor Dan’s memory may be made to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. A celebration-of-life event is being planned for later this year. Burial will be private at Lincoln Cemetery. Arrangements are under the care of Concord Funeral Home, which provided this obituary. Click here to leave a note in Dan’s online guestbook.