Aaron Sam Blanchard

August 15, 1968 – December 2, 2024 – Aaron Sam Blanchard, known to all as Sam, passed away peacefully at RWJ University hospital In New Brunswick, NJ on December 2, 2024 in the presence of his wife and daughters. He was 56.

With loved ones spread coast to coast, Sam has left a wide void across this continent, from a life of adventures that started in Oregon and took him to New Jersey.

Born in Salem, Oregon, he grew up in Independence- a true Gen X childhood of bicycling, racing in soap box derbys, reading comics, and drawing, as he inherited both his artist parents’ talent.

After graduating from Central High School’s storied class of ’86, he briefly attended the University of Oregon. He then held various jobs, including freelance illustrator. He later got a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Oregon Institute of Technology.

Moving to Portland, he took up fencing at the Studio of American Fencing and began fencing foil competitively in 1995. He met his Oregon-born, New Jersey- raised wife, Cate, in 1997. They moved to Princeton, NJ on September 15, 2000, only for Sam to be diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma 3 days later. Sam successfully fought through 9 months of treatment while still commuting to NYC every day.

He began coaching the Princeton High School Fencing team in 2012, which he absolutely loved. He was a coach and instructor at Bucks County Academy of Fencing in Lambertville, NJ as of 2018, often with his children in tow. Sam formed the Princeton Interscholastic Fencing Club in 2018 to further share his love for the sport. After leaving his corporate job in December 2019, he was able to live his dream as a fencing coach full-time.

During the COVID lockdown, he focused on his other passion- art. As an indie comic artist, he worked under the nom de plume “Shlepzig” derived from a character in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, one of his favorite books. When the world reopened, he became a regular at comic cons and amassed fans from around the world.

There was so much Sam had hoped to still do in life – he planned myriad comics, many more fencing classes, adventures in grandparenthood, and countless future entrepreneurial endeavors. We’ll never know if we’re blessed or cursed that he didn’t have time to take the cricket farming world by storm.

Sam was preceded in death by his father, Melvin Blanchard in May 2021 and his son Bjorn Blanchard, in July 2024.

Sam will be deeply missed by his heartbroken wife of 26 years, Cate; his three daughters: Phoebe Blanchard, Ursula Blanchard (Riley) of Burnaby, BC, Canada, and Jessica LeDuc (Michael) of Portland, Oregon; his mother, Merry Ann Blanchard of Lincoln City, Oregon; sister Andrea Whitaker (Ben), of Sherwood, Oregon; his grandsons, Nikolai and Hawthorne of Portland; several nieces and nephews, friends, former fencing students and fans of his artwork too numerous to count.

A celebration of his extraordinary life will be held at a later date. The family asks that donations be made in his memory to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (https://www.lls.org/) or the United States Fencing Foundation (https://www.usafencing.org/donate-foundation).