Carl A. Pescosolido Jr.; Independent Grower

Carl A. (Skip) Pescosolido Jr., a Harvard-educated economist who became a major independent citrus grower based in the San Joaquin Valley town of Exeter, is dead at the age of 55.

Pescosolido, who founded the Sequoia Orange Co., was killed Wednesday night in an automobile accident in Dallas.

He had gained a reputation as an independent grower who actively opposed federal marketing orders and shipping quotas.

Once sued by federal authorities for giving oranges away, Pescosolido staunchly opposed the cooperative marketing system of citrus sales popularized by Sunkist. He filed more than a dozen civil suits against Sunkist, protesting alleged quota violations, and his research provided the basis for federal suits against Sunkist that were filed in 1983.

The shipping order system dates back to the Depression and was designed to stabilize the citrus market by limiting the amount of oranges or lemons each shipper could move. Pescosolido argued strongly that the U.S. Department of Agriculture marketing order system was unconstitutional and encouraged illegal cartels.

Pescosolido got into farming by chance. After graduating from Harvard, he taught and coached for a time in private schools and then joined his father’s heating oil firm in Boston. He came to Los Angeles in 1971 to join an uncle in an unsuccessful attempt to purchase 250 service stations and a bulk oil distribution operation. While looking at potential properties, he visited Exeter and saw a better business opportunity in citrus farming.

“I had never been in the San Joaquin Valley before, and I was quite taken with the area,” he told The Times years later. He liquidated his other holdings and moved his family to Exeter.

A 1955 graduate of the private prep school called the Governor Dummer Academy in Byfield, Mass., Pescosolido was named a trustee of the school in 1970. He had been president of its board since 1980. Last month, the school dedicated a $4-million field house in his honor.

Headmaster Peter W. Bragdon said that Pescosolido’s death was “a tremendous loss” for the school, and that Pescosolido’s “legacy of excellence, generosity and caring will continue to flourish in the Governor Dummer family.”

Pescosolido is survived by his wife, Linda; son, Philip; daughter, Pamela Goldsmith, and two grandchildren, all of Exeter; son, Winthrop, of Cambridge, Mass.; his father, Carl A. Pescosolido, of Ipswich, Mass., and his mother, Evelyn Pescosolido, of Lake Clarke Shores, Fla.