Gurdon H. Slosberg, longtime businessman, civic leader and advocate for his native city, Norwich, Conn., died Aug. 13 at the Westerly Nursing Home, where he had resided for several years. He was 96. He was born in Norwich on Aug. 4, 1920, the son of the late Samuel and Fannie Strom Slosberg. He was educated in Norwich schools and graduated from Norwich Free Academy in 1938. He attended Harvard College, graduating with honors in economics in 1942. Two months after graduating college, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and, during World War II, served in France, Germany and Austria, attaining the rank of Technician Fourth Grade, or Sergeant, in the Signal Corps. In June 1944, he married Sara B. Sears, also of Norwich, at the Grand Lake Lodge in Colchester, Conn. She predeceased him, in December 1995. In January 1998, he married Helen Rabinovitch Guss, also of Norwich, and currently residing in Los Angeles, Calif. She survives him. He also is survived by two sons, Steven Slosberg of Stonington, Conn., and Peter Slosberg of San Francisco, Calif.; a brother, Dr. Paul S. Slosberg of New Rochelle, N.Y.; four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his sisters, Beverly S. Gordon and Virginia S. Slosberg. During most of his business career, Mr. Slosberg was vice president of the Yantic Grain and Products Co., a Norwich feed manufacturing concern that began in the early 1920s on Cove Street, on the city’s ethnically vibrant West Side, and grew out of a hay, grain and feed company founded by his grandfather, Charles Slosberg, in Norwich the late 19th century. Yantic Grain, or Big “Y,” as it came to be known, sold coal, lumber and farm machinery besides grain, feed and cereals, and eventually wholesaled groceries under a cooperative agreement that used the name Universal Food Stores and offered canned foods bearing the label Thames Valley. Mr. Slosberg took great pride in the relationship between The Big “Y” Foundation, operated by Yantic Grain, and the University of Connecticut’s College of Agriculture which involved the funding of a research laboratory that created an advanced formula – “The Big Y Super Broiler Ration” – for raising poultry. He was president of the Eastern Federation of Feed Merchants, an agri-trade alliance in the Northeastern United States, from 1962-63. From the early 1960s until the early 1980s, he was one of the principals in another Yantic Grain venture – Vality, a department store and supermarket under one roof, then a novel enterprise in the region, located in Gales Ferry. Besides his business interests, Mr. Slosberg was devoted to his native city, serving more than 30 years, including several as chairman, on what was once the Southeastern Connecticut Regional Planning Agency and later the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments. He also served nearly 40 years on the city’s Inland Wetlands, Watercourses and Conservation Commission. In August 2006, the City of Norwich honored him with a proclamation for having “contributed enormously to the betterment of the City of Norwich through his outstanding leadership and dedication on various boards and commissions.” In January 1973, he was awarded a master’s degree in urban planning from Southern Connecticut State University, authoring a thesis on the history of the Norwich Industrial Park as part of his degree work. He was a corporator of Chelsea-Groton Bank and an honorary corporator of the William W. Backus Hospital, where he also was a volunteer for many years. He was a member of the Kiwanis Club, SCORE, Somerset-St. James Masonic Lodge #34 and other civic organizations as well as the Beth Jacob Synagogue before moving from Norwich to a retirement community in Mystic in 2006. He was an attentive and loving son, brother, husband and father, ever aware of educational and athletic opportunities for his children and grandchildren, and abiding faithfully by his first wife’s side during her five open heart surgeries in the course of their 51-year marriage. An able athlete in high school and college, he was an active tennis player on the clay courts in Norwich and was especially proud of the fact that in 1938, as a 17-year-old, he and his partner, the late George Silverman, won the state doubles championship for NFA, beating a team from Hartford’s Weaver High in three sets. His family deeply appreciates the care provided to him by the staff at the Westerly Nursing Home. The funeral will be private.