The Old Guard
Edward M. Bredin EE’15, Lafayette Hill, Pa., Apr. 2, 1981.
1920s
Helen Ransom Bryant WEF’24, Mechanicsburg, Pa., a retired clerical worker with the old Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources; Jan. 5.
Ruth Baldwin CCT’25, Towanda, Pa., 1986.
Elizabeth B. Elias Ed’25, Rydal, Pa., Dec. 7, 1999.
Louise Wayl Kirschbaum Mu’26, Philadelphia, a retired professional photographer; Jan. 19.
William H. Kneass W’25, Whittier, Calif., retired district manager for U.S. Tire & Rubber Co.; Sept. 30. He was a co-founder and first president of the Southern California Tire Dealers Association.
William E. Lingelbach Jr. C’25, Wyndmoor, Pa., retired partner of the Philadelphia law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius who engineered Blue Cross entering the Philadelphia insurance market; Jan. 8. He served on the board of Independence Blue Cross till 1987. At Penn he was a three-time All-American soccer player; he was an inaugural inductee into Penn’s Athletics Hall of Fame. A Rhodes scholar, he represented the University of Oxford twice in soccer and three times in tennis, and was among the first Americans to be on the teams for both sports. Devoted to court tennis, the predecessor of modern lawn tennis, he took major amateur titles in the game and was the American and British doubles champion; he was the board president of the Philadelphia Racquet Club for 11 years. A longtime leader of the national and local chapters of the English-Speaking Union, he received an honorary CBE from Queen Elizabeth in 1962. His father, William E. Lingelbach Sr., had been head of history at Penn.
Clifford G. Cornwell W’26, Bridgewater, N.J., Oct. 24, 1998.
Rawdon Libby C’26 L’29, San Francisco, a retired attorney; May 24, 2000.
Anna M. Breneman PSW’27, Philadelphia, Nov. 23, 1998.
Sarah M. Jamieson Ed’27, Gloucester, N.J.
Gordon A. Ogden W’27, Rumson, N.J., Feb. 21, 1991.
Frederick W. Held C’28, Largo, Fla., Jan. 10, 1999.
Dorothy M. Bergmann Ed’29, Rydal, Pa., Oct. 21, 1999.
Sidney Jacobson W’29, Los Angeles, retired owner of a secretarial service; Oct. 2. He helped open a branch of the Wells Fargo Bank in West Los Angeles
Raymond M. Pearlstine W’29 L’32, Haverford, Pa., a retired senior partner of Wisler, Pearlstine, Talone, Craig, Garrity & Potash of Blue Bell; Dec. 30. He was prominent in Montgomery County legal circles for almost 60 years, serving as president of the county bar association, and as vice president of the disciplinary board of the state supreme court and governor of the Pennsylvania Bar. He was a director of Meridian Bancorp, and the American Bank and Trust Co. of Pennsylvania.
Elinor Riedel Ed’29, Somerdale, N.J., Dec. 5.
1930s
Gustave G. Amsterdam C’30 L’33, Philadelphia, the retired chair and CEO of Bankers Securities Corporation who was a trustee emeritus of the University and overseer emeritus of the University Museum and the Graduate School of Fine Arts; Feb. 12. He was a director of the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Orchestra Association.
Walker G. Buckner WG’31, La Jolla, Calif., Nov. 26, 1998.
Virginia Yerger Dixon Ed’31, Plano, Tex., a retired chemistry teacher at Upper Darby High School outside Philadelphia; Dec. 25.
Rev. Howard B. Haines C’31, Rochester, N.Y., pastor at Hyde Park Presbyterian Church in Niagara Falls, who retired in 1976; Dec. 24. He had served as pastor of Tokyo Union Church, an international interdenominational church, from 1957 to 1964.
Dr. William Greifinger C’32, South Orange, N.J., retired director of internal medicine at St. James and City hospitals in Newark; Feb. 7. He also had maintained a practice in Belleville for more than 50 years. He was a former medical director of the Newark Board of Education. A past president of the Essex County Medical Society, he had also served as chair of trustees of the Medical Society of New Jersey.
Dr. Emil Lang D’32, Lucerne, Switzerland, a retired dentist; Apr. 13, 1999.
Milton Reisman WEF’32, Olyphant, Pa., June 24, 2000.
Bernard W. Schiro W’32, West Hartford, Conn., retired chair of the board of G. Fox & Co.; Jan. 18. For many years he was manager of its children’s department.
Dr. Louis Udell C’32 M’36, Philadelphia, a retired rheumatologist and instructor in the School of Medicine; Feb. 4. He had maintained a private practice in Northeast Philadelphia for many years, and was a staff physician at Nazareth and Lower Bucks hospitals. A fellow of the American College of Rheumatology, he collaborated on an early study of the use of cortisone injections to treat arthritis. Dr. Louis Udell was an instructor in the Medical School from 1950 to 1974.
Raymond H. Bastian W’33, Evans, Ga., a retired accountant with Georgia-Pacific Corp.; Dec. 11.
Dr. Horton Corwin Hinshaw Jr. M’33, San Rafael, Calif., professor emeritus of medicine at the University of California Medical School at San Francisco; Jan. 5, 2000. A pioneer in the treatment of tuberculosis, he is reputed to be the first physician to successfully treat TB patients with streptomycin.
John K. Young W’33 L’36, Philadelphia, a senior partner of the law firm of Peck, Young & Van Sant; Jan. 13. He had served as legal counsel for the Masonic Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania.
J. Ellwood Ludwig Ed’34, Frederick, Pa., former head football, basketball and baseball coach at Bucknell University; Jan. 29. He was president of Camp Bil-O-Wood in Blind River, Ont., which he had co-founded with his wife in 1946 and co-directed with his sons till 1999.
Norman M. Lichtenstein C’34, Larchmont, N.Y., Oct. 18. He was strongly involved with Penn’s Alumni Council on Admissions and chaired the Manhattan secondary-schools committee. He is survived by his son, Dr. John S. Lichtenstein C’65, daughter, Nancy Lichtenstein Kappler CW’67, son, David R. Lichtenstein EE’73, son-in-law, Ted Kappler C’65, grandson, Steven M. Kappler C’98,and many nieces who attended Penn.
N. Richard Nash Ed’34, New York, a playwright and screenwriter, best known for his 1954 play and 1956 film, The Rainmaker; Dec. 11. Turning to novels in later life, he wrote the bestselling East Wind, Rain, about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; it was based on both research and his own experience working for the Office of War Information during the Second World War.
G. Frederick Roll W’34, Carmel, Calif., retired vice president for public affairs for the old Smith, Kline & French in Philadelphia; Jan. 26. Under his direction the firm held the first live, color closed-circuit telecast of a surgical operation; the original camera is in the Smithsonian Institution. In retirement, he and his wife, Barbara Honeyman, a physical anthropologist, accompanied Margaret Mead on a number of trips to Papua New Guinea, where he actively participated in their studies and took to photographing many aspects of village life: with his wife he published Stori Bilong Pere. He also published A Photobiography. He was captain of the tennis team at Penn; and he served on the board of the old General Alumni Society.
William T. Samuel WEF’34, Jensen Beach, Fla., retired deputy controller at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, N.Y.; Jan. 29.
Sidney Joseph Mullins WEv’35, Largo, Fla., a retired accountant for the City of Philadelphia; Jan. 20.
Boyd L. Spahr Jr. L’35, Blue Bell, Pa., retired partner of the Philadelphia law firm of Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll LLP; Jan. 4. He had served on the board of Dickinson College for many years.
John P. Bushnell W’36, Naples, Fla., May 17, 1998.
William R. Cary WEv’36, Middletown, Pa., June 2, 2000.
Howard H. Conley Jr. W’36, Stamford, Conn., retired vice president of marketing for the New York Life Insurance Co.; Jan. 5. He was a past president of the Greenwich chapter of the American Red Cross.
Robert G. Croot W’36, Chatham, N.J., May 17, 2000.
Catherine B. Everett Ed’36, Swarthmore, Pa., Aug. 15, 1998.
John J. Gavin WEv’36, East Greenwich, R.I., retired regional manager for the Sun Oil Co.; Jan. 5.
Dorothy Ainey Hoffman DH’36, New Brunswick, N.J., July 10, 1995.
John W. Keller Jr. W’36, Lake Forest, Calif., October.
Dr. John H. Prewitt M’36, Lexington, Ky., a physician; Dec. 1.
Theodore J. Seiver C’36, Chevy Chase, Md., Nov. 28.
Richard W. Walton ChE’36, Langhorne, Pa., a retired researcher with Squibb, who was responsible for the development of the veneer coating of tablets, and a number of sugar substitutes; Jan. 10.
Karl M. F. Wilke W’36, Schenectady, N.Y., retired head of his old family’s business in Albany, Wilke’s Dry Cleaning and Laundry; Jan. 2. He spent five years in the U.S. Army in the late 1930s as technical adviser of laundry operations holding the rank of major; he is credited with formalizing many of the army’s policies for clean and presentable uniforms. He later traveled the country, setting up laundry services for servicemen and women. When his family’s company was bought by the city in 1966 and pulled down for a housing project, he moved to Joliet, Ill., as vice president of the American Institute of Laundering, but returned to Albany in 1976 and opened another Wilke’s Dry Cleaning on the same street.
Dr. Morris L. Ziskind V’36, Silver Spring, Md., a retired swine veterinarian who had maintained a practice in Secaucus, N.J.; Jan. 22.
Dr. Herbert S. Greenspan C’37 GM’45, Jenkintown, Pa., retired head of the children’s psychiatric clinic at Abington Memorial Hospital; Dec. 24.
Dr. Charles F. Owen Jr. M’37, Asheboro, N.C., the first radiologist to practice in the Piedmont, who retired in 1986; Jan. 6.
Werner G. Schmidt WEv’38, Schnecksville, Pa., retired treasurer of the Livingston Sheet Metal Corp.; Jan. 19.
Dr. Oliver William Suehs GM’38, Austin, Tex., a retired otolaryngologist who had maintained a practice there for 35 years; Jan. 2. A former chief of staff at St. David’s Hospital, he had served as president of the Travis County Medical Society, vice president of the otolaryngology section of the Texas Medical Association and vice president of the American Laryngology Association.
Dr. Birna Nystrom Sullivan GM’38, Green Valley, Ariz.
Sophie Camp Burbank PSW’39, Kennett Square, Pa., Dec. 14, 1999.
David H. Kollock III W’39, Philadelphia, founder and former chief executive officer of the Philadelphia Resins Corp. in Montgomeryville; Jan. 26.
Vincent P. Sumerfield Jr. L’39, Bedminster, N.J., a retired attorney with the Kemper Insurance Co.; Jan. 28.
1940s
Marian Schussler Belcher CW’40, Plymouth, Minn., Jan. 4.
Dr. Joseph S. Burkle C’40 M’43 GM’50, York, Pa., December.
Robert T. Dunn W’40, Quincy, Fla., 2000.
Edward A. Gray CCC’40, Columbus, N.J., a retired chemical engineer who had been in charge of the water and air pollution control at the Allied Chemical plant in Philadelphia; Dec. 23.
Dr. Floyd M. Landis M’40, Leola, Pa., a retired physician who had maintained a practice there for 40 years; Feb. 5.
Margaret Little McComas GEd’40, Newport, N.H., retired chief physical therapist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, who had served here from 1948 to 1970; Dec. 2. Even in retirement in New Hampshire, she attended to PT cases in the local hospital and nursing home.
William R. Reynolds L’40, Bala Cynwyd, Pa., an attorney; Dec. 27.
James G Aiken W’41 L’48, Haddonsfield, N.J., an attorney; Jan. 14. He had served as first assistant prosecutor for Camden County and acting prosecutor for Salem County, and he was the Haddonfield borough solicitor in the late 1950s. And he taught business law at Rutgers University Law School for many years.
Archie Ansell W’41, Sarasota, Fla., a retired accountant and program analyst for the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va.; Jan. 22.
Samuel J. Broers W’41, Akron, Ohio, Jan. 1.
James Hermiston W’41, Chatham, Mass., Sept. 16, 1996.
Newert Shamlian Kaplan CW’41, Boca Raton, Fla., May 19, 2000.
Harry Katz W’41, Chicago, co-founder of United Exposition Service Co., a conventions-contracting firm; Jan. 2. He served on the executive committee of the Chicago Convention Bureau. He helped his family set up the company in Atlantic City after the Second World War, rather than complete his degree, though he finished it in the early 1980s.
Helen Levy G’41, Wilmington, Del., Dec. 3.
Earl E. Moore WEv’41, Wynnewood, Pa., owner of Earl Moore Inc., an appraisal service; Jan. 5.
Elisabeth Gray Schumacker CW’41, Devon, Pa., Jan. 5. She served on the board of the Women’s Committee of Wills Eye Hospital for more than 40 years.
Dr. Bernard J. Shuman C’41, Moorestown, N.J., retired pediatrician who had served as an associate professor of child psychiatry at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia and as a senior child psychiatrist at the Hahnemann Community Health/Mental Retardation Center; Jan. 19. He was a consultant for the New Jersey child-welfare and courts systems. He served on the editorial board of Infant Mental Health Journal.
Dr. Edgar Silverman SW’41, Bethesda, Md., retired social-work director for the Juvenile Court in Washington; Jan. 29.
Mary Margaret Francis Hillenbrand Ed’42 GEd’43,Columbus, Ohio, a retired librarian for the Columbus Metropolitan Library; Dec. 31.
Herman Shifren C’42, Roslyn Heights, N.Y., retired director of advertising for Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories; Jan. 11. During his times with the company, he helped introduce new drugs for hypertension, coronary disease, osteoporosis and menopause. After retiring, he continued to write advertising copy as a freelancer for two years, then concentrated on his (unfinished) novel about his life in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War.
H. John Weisman Jr. L’42, Waterbury, Conn., Nov. 6.
George F. Bellezza C’43, Hatboro, Pa., Sept. 9.
Lt.Col. Bjarne N. Folling V’43, Kamuela, Hawaii, a retired veterinarian in the U.S. Army; Aug. 20. Retiring to Hawaii, he set up a veterinary practice, and practiced into his late seventies.
Dr. Richard C. Fowler D’43, Cranbury, N.J., a dentist; July 15.
Dr. Arthur M. Hochheiser D’43, Hackensack, N.J., a retired dentist who had maintained a practice in Lodi for 50 years; Feb. 2.
Dr. Henry A. Segal C’43 M’46, Chevy Chase, Md., a psychiatrist; Jan. 12. For many years he taught at the Washington School of Psychiatry and recently at the Georgetown University Medical School.
Gordon D. Stevens W’43, Wayne, Pa., Nov. 6.
Jerome Marvin Frank CE’44, Allentown, Pa., owner of an insurance agency; Jan. 18.
Freda B. Rosenblum PSW’44, New Hyde Park, N.Y., Nov. 5.
Marylou Allen Klein OT’45, Pen Argyl, Pa., a retired special-education teacher and therapist for the East Aurora, Ill., public-school system; Jan. 8.
Dr. Hiram L. Wiest M’45, Hershey, Pa., retired assistant professor of family and community medicine at Hershey Medical College; Jan. 11. He helped found the Department of Family and Community Medicine there. He was a past president of the Pennsylvania Academy of General Practice. Tracing his family’s roots since 1938, after retirement he helped restore a 20-plot cemetery of his family in West Cocalico that dated back more than 200 years.
Dr. Alfred Dobrak GM’46, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a retired radiologist at Sisters Hospital and the old Emergency Hospital in Buffalo, N.Y.; Jan. 26.
Oliver L. Einstein W’46, New York, Oct. 1991.
Dr. Claire L. Gilles GEd’46 Gr’62, professor of education at Kutztown University; Philadelphia, Jan. 7.
Janice Weiss Kahn Ed’46, Penn Valley, Pa., a former elementary schoolteacher; Jan. 23. She was a charter board member of Women for Greater Philadelphia.
Dorothy M. Richards Ed’46 GEd’53, Towamencin, Pa., retired director of nursing at Philadelphia’s Presbyterian Hospital; Jan. 10.
Muriel Kasov Alderman PSW’47, Virginia Beach, Va., a retired social worker with Family Services and Travelers’ Aid of Norfolk; Jan. 26. She taught for many years at Old Dominion University, Norfolk State University and Virginia Wesleyan University.
Paul R. Betz G’47, Philadelphia, retired associate dean of the evening division at St. Joseph’s University; Dec. 25. After retiring in 1984, he taught English as a second language for 10 years.
Jay Jerome W’47, Cherry Hill, N.J., a legendary Philadelphia big-band leader; Jan. 29. He formed the Jay Jerome Orchestra in the late 1940s, and performed at weddings, bar mitzvahs and Jewish community events, but soon was playing at the region’s biggest social events throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It made its summer home at the old Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City for many seasons. He was described by his daughter as more an entertainer than a musician: “He could get everybody up and moving and involved at the party.” A wise businessman, he formed an alliance with his competitors, creating Music Associates in 1948; this first band conglomerate in the country reigned—with 20 bands—in Philadelphia into the early 1970s. Jay Jerome and his orchestra performed until the mid-1980s, when he retired to care for his ill wife.
Hannah Levin PSW’47, Bronx, N.Y., 1999.
Ruth Radbill Scott CW’47, Rydal, Pa., Dec. 29. She had served for many years on the board of overseers of the University Museum.
Gloria Snyder O’Reilly Ed’47 GEd’48, Wappingers Falls, N.Y., Mar. 11, 1993.
Kenneth Whitney GEd’47, Abington, Pa., Dec. 5, 1999.
Col. Dora M. Coover Ed’48, San Antonio, Tex., Aug. 23.
William A. Grant W’48, Las Vegas, an attorney.
Mary Congreve Lounsbury CW’48, Keene, N.H., June 23, 1998. She had worked
for Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories and Reader’s Digest.
Dr. David R. Patrick GM’48, Beaver, Pa., Nov. 29, 1992.
Joseph M. Risi C’48, Broomall, Pa., Sept. 15.
Harold R. Rowe Ed’48 GEd’49, Kailua, Hawaii, Apr. 10, 1998.
Brenton H. Smith G’48, Oxford, Ohio, 2000.
Dr. Benjamin Van Acker III D’48, Rensselaer, N.Y., a dentist who had maintained a practice there for many years; Dec. 28.
Dr. Edmund R. Biddle CCC’49 Gr’65, Bryn Mawr, Pa., retired professor of English and American literature at Widener University; Dec. 31. He was a published poet.
Kenneth O. Blair Ar’49, Langhorne, Pa.
William J. Citti WG’49, Westport, Conn., December.
John H. DeWitt WEv’49, Blue Bell, Pa., retired owner of the Royersford Spring Co., which manufactured heavy-duty vehicle springs, and Stevenson Bros., a Philadelphia maker of custom waxes and oils; Jan. 29.
John F. Dickey W’49, Columbus, Ohio.
Howard J. McKinney W’49, Ambler, Pa., retired accountant for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Lutheran Church of America; Jan. 27.
Dr. Robert W. Rhoads Gr’49, Chambersburg, Pa., emeritus professor of history at the old Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science; Apr. 7, 2000.
1950s
Agnete Heine Austin Nu’50, Garden Grove, Calif., July 20, 2000.
Paul N. Baker Jr. GEd’50, Indianapolis, retired owner of Baker Business Products; Dec. 23.
James W. Fixel CCC’50, Highland Park, Mich., Nov. 22.
John F. MacDonald C’50, Downingtown, Pa., a retired technical editor and writer for the old Burroughs Corp.; Jan. 16. He recently was an Internet trainer at the Springhouse Computer School in Chester County. He was on the rowing team at Penn.
Jeanette R. McDonnal GEd’50, Seaford, Del., May 22, 2000.
Dr. Paul E. Maust M’50, Butler, Pa., retired surgeon who had served as chief of staff at Butler Memorial Hospital; Jan. 21. He was a past president of the Butler Medical Society.
Frederick J. Burroughs WEv’51, Absecon, N.J., Aug. 18.
Elda Weber Eldridge Nu’51, Naples, Fla., Aug. 17.
Harold L. Grogin W’51, Houston, Tex., Jan. 2.
Lloyd J. Parsons GEd’51, Flourtown, Pa., retired assistant superintendent of the Hatboro-Horsham School District; Feb. 5.
Daniel Polin C’51, Seattle, Jan. 3.
Jonas Stelmokas GAr’51, Media, Pa., Nov. 23, 1998.
Eric W. Babcock WEv’52, Venice, Fla., Sept. 12.
Dr. Ralph M. Brugger M’52, Ames, Iowa, a physician who had practiced at the McFarland Clinic for 33 years; Aug. 9.
Louis E. DiCarlo W’52, Audubon, Pa., Jan. 2.
Dr. Edward C. Schiebel D’52, Elkin, N.C., a dentist; May 24, 1999.
Rev. Dr. Jan H. Busch G’53, Villanova, Pa., professor of physical and general chemistry at Villanova University; Jan. 8. He had also taught at the Augustinian College in Bolivia and at the Universidad Cat�lica de Santo Tomas in Havana, until it was closed and confiscated by the Castro government in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Harold J. Niemeyer WEv’53, West Chester, Pa., Nov. 27.
Donald Lackman WEv’54, Merion, Pa., Oct. 12.
John Blood Jr. C’55, Devon, Pa., retired vice president for information systems at SmithKline Beecham; Dec. 27. On the varsity track team at Penn, he ran marathons throughout his life.
Dr. Flozella R. Clark SW’55, Baltimore, 1999.
Dr. Joseph A. Raffaele Gr’55, Philadelphia, a retired labor-relations arbitrator and mediator; Dec. 20. For a time he was the mediator for the Philadelphia longshoremen. He taught at Drexel University.
Donald W. Sampson WG’55, Glencoe, Ill., July 28.
Dr. William R. Peters G’56, State College, Pa., retired professor of English at Kutztown University; Jan. 28.
Dr. Harold G. Herr D’57, Ephrata, Pa., a dentist who had maintained a practice there for 42 years; Jan. 20. He was a past president of the Lancaster Dental Society and he had served on the board of Ephrata Community Hospital.
Mary L. Burk Nu’58 GEd’63, Prairie Village, Kans., an administrator at Truman Medical Center who helped establish the nursing program there; Jan. 20.
Michael A. Orlando III L’58, Westmont, N.J., an attorney who had served as solicitor for Haddon Township; Dec. 26.
Dr. Bernard Sigel GM’58, Philadelphia, retired dean and chair of surgery at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, known for his research on advanced applications of ultrasound; Dec. 26. His work led to the use of ultrasound to detect damaged leg veins and to clarify whether clogged neck arteries posed a stroke hazard. He also promoted the use of ultrasound as a pre-surgical technique to enable surgeons to pinpoint the exact location of the problem and determine how big to make the incision, and so minimizing the invasiveness of the operation.
Dr. Peter C. Pavitt C’59, Savannah, Ga., a physician; Dec. 31, 1997.
1960s
William L. Boger C’60 D’64, Palm Coast, Fla., a retired dentist who had maintained a practice in Warren, Pa., for many years; Jan. 11.
Dr. Thomas R. Gorman Gr’60, Evanston, Ill., Jan. 16, 2000.
Dr. Felice J. Santore GM’60, Rosemont, Pa., a retired otolaryngologist who also was a member of the senior staff of Lankenau Hospital; Jan. 5. He was a former chief of staff at Fitzgerald Mercy Hospital in Darby and the old Misericordia Hospital in Philadelphia.
Silas Spengler L’60, Middleton, Wisc., a retired New York lawyer; Jan. 31.
Dr. William R. Tenenbaum D’60, Marblehead, Mass., a dentist; Dec. 17.
James T. Cobb C’61 WG’62, Charlotte, N.C.
Michael A. Conviser W’61, Aspen, Colo., June 11, 2000. A businessman, he started a local savings and loan. He was president of the Aspen Country Day School.
Lawrence B. Harding W’61, Rockport, Mass., vice president for human resources at Visualization Technology, Inc.; Dec. 2.
Dr. Granville R. Lewis GD’61, Camden, N.J., a dentist who had maintained a practice there from 1959 till he retired in 1994; Jan. 20. He had taught at Penn’s School of Dental Medicine. He had served on the board of the Camden County College, where he also had taught.
Jessie M. Mastrolembo SW’61, Philadelphia, Oct. 2.
Lois E. Schoppee GEd’61, Walpole, Mass., November.
Mary L. Smith Tragus Nu’62 GNu’70, Dallas, Tex., director of children’s health exhibits at the Science Place; Dec. 22. She had earlier taught nursing at Texas Women’s University.
Dr. Donald T. Runk D’63, Coatesville, Pa., a dentist who had maintained a practice in Parkesburg for 37 years; Jan. 15. He had served on the dental staff of Brandywine Hospital.
Mary Townsend Hamill G’64, Princeton, N.J.
Dr. Andrew D. Kranik C’64, Elizabeth, Pa., a retired orthopedic surgeon at Monongahela Valley Hospital; Dec. 13.
Theodore J. Strein GEd’64, Montoursville, Pa., retired head of mathematics at Williamsport High School; Jan. 12.
Richard T. Falise WEv’65, Cape May, N.J., retired general manager for Daniels Cadillac-BMW in Allentown, Pa.; Jan. 8.
James P. Vicente C’65, Turnersville, N.J., October.
Edwin B. Iwanicki G’66, Philadelphia, Apr. 7, 1994.
Charles A. Behrens WG’67, Harrison, Maine, a management consultant; Jan. 5.
Dr. Robert W. Brown V’67, Gainesville, Fla., a veterinarian; Nov. 3.
John G. Cheney Jr. WG’67, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., retired co-founder of Midas Computing Service in Buffalo, N.Y.; Dec. 25.
Jonah A. Kleinstein SW’67, Bernardsville, N.J., June 17, 1999.
Blair W. MacDermid GEE’67, Fort Wayne, Ind., Aug. 16.
O. Anderson Petty III WG’68, Princeton, N.J., head of Petty Communications, a management consultancy; Jan. 3.
Naomi Teitelman Sutton SW’68, Bala Cynwyd, Pa., October.
William A. Burck III L’69, New York, a U.S. commercial attach� to Venezuela and the Dominican Republic; Dec. 30. He had been an attorney with the Manhattan law firm of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, and with Motorola and the Data General Corp.
1970s
Dr. A. Katherine Blikslager Fischer Gr’70, Newtown, Pa., retired professor of German at Bucks County Community College; Jan. 17.
Rev. Dr. Sherman S. Roddy Gr’71, Granite, Md., retired minister of the Presbyterian Church there; Jan. 23. He had taught at Penn and had served as academic dean at Daniel Webster College in Nashua, N.H.
Kenneth I. Schonwalter C’72, Short Hills, N.J., May 19, 1999.
Ruth I. Wheeler WEv’72 WEv’76, Bryn Mawr, Pa., Aug. 1, 1999.
Dolores M. Driscoll PT’73, Falls Church, Va., July 17, 1999.
Dr. Hugh B. Davies Gr’75, London, Oct. 11. He taught in the Department of Economics at Birkbeck University of London.
Rev. Gweneth L. Hazelton CW’75 G’75, Falls Village, Conn., a pastor with the United Church of Christ; Jan. 5.
Anthony M. Ramaviglia WEv’75, Fairless Hills, Pa., Feb. 20, 2000.
Dr. Robert Stanek GM’77, Huntingdon Valley, Pa., a retired otolaryngologist who had served on the staffs of Frankford and Holy Redeemer Hospitals; Dec. 31. He had served on the staff of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
1980s
Swan Liong Oey EAS/W’82, Wayne. Pa., chief financial officer of The Community Builders, Inc., a nonprofit in Boston that focuses on comprehensive neighborhood revitalization by creating decent affordable housing; Jan. 2. He joined in 1987 as project manager, then served as manager of housing development and then as director of finance. He was responsible for dramatically expanding the organization’s finance activity over recent years, including creation of three tax-credit equity funds bringing in over $100 million of capital investments. He had earlier worked in this country and the Netherlands for the Badger Company, an international engineering construction firm, in Japan for Nomura Securities, in Indonesia for PricewaterhouseCoopers and in Sweden for Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken. He had founded a microcomputer-software company and once served as business and advertising manager of a bilingual Chinese-American newspaper. Swan Liong Oey was also treasurer of Boston Senior Home Care, a member of LEAD Boston, co-founder and trustee of the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School in Boston, and a member of the Harvard Business School Non-Profit and Public Management Club Advisory Board.
Douglas W. Caterfino W’83, Short Hills, N.J., a managing director at Goldman Sachs in New York; Feb. 2.
Frank Mullen GCP’84, Glasgow, area operations manager for the Scottish Tourist Board; 2000.
Leonard V. Price WEv’85, Wyndmoor, Pa., Aug. 5, 1997.
Dr. Jeffrey W. Berger GEng’87 Gr’91 M’92, Cherry Hill, N.J., an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University and a fellow in vitreoretinal diseases at the Scheie Eye Institute; Jan. 25. He joined Scheie in 1996, he founded and directed the Computer Vision Laboratory and served as principal investigator of an age-related macular-degeneration complications trial. In addition to maintaining a large clinical practice and serving as chief of the retina service at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center, he was involved in collaborative research with investigators throughout the world. His extensive bibliography included peer-reviewed publications in the ophthalmic as well as the engineering literature; he was also an expert on laser-tissue interactions as well as optical imaging. Among his more important recent publications was his principal editorship of the textbook, Age-
related Macular Degeneration (1999).
Patricia Pullman CGS’89, Tucson, Ariz., Oct. 12, 1998.
Faculty & Staff
Dr. Jeffrey W. Berger. See Class of 1987.
Dr. Granville R. Lewis. See Class of 1961.
Margaret Little McComas. See Class of 1940.
Rev. Dr. Sherman S. Roddy. See Class of 1971.
Dr. Robert Stanek. See Class of 1977.
Dr. Louis Udell. See Class of 1932.
Leonard Davis Hon’72, West Palm Beach, Fla., retired founder of the Colonial Penn Group who also founded the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics; Jan. 15. In 1963 he founded the Colonial Penn Group, which became one of the country’s largest insurance underwriters for older Americans. A noted philanthropist, he was instrumental with his wife, Sophie, in establishing the institute at Penn in 1967, in response to the growing need for high-quality research and education to inform policies critical to the financing and management of the nation’s increasingly costly and complex health-care system. The center remains one of the only research institutes in the country that integrates medicine, nursing, and management expertise and applies it to resolving contemporary health-care issues.
Ian L. McHarg, 1920-2001
Ian L. McHarg, the charismatic founder and emeritus professor of landscape architecture and regional planning at Penn, and the author of such books as Design with Nature and To Heal the Earth, died March 5, 2001 of pulmonary disease. He was 80 years old.
McHarg began his teaching career at Penn in 1954, and was world-renowned for his philosophy of incorporating environmental concerns into designs. In his 1996 autobiography, A Quest for Life, McHarg noted that “the most powerful act I initiated was to offer a new course in the fall of 1957 entitled Man and Environment,” which was taken by “perhaps three or four thousand students” and led to the CBS television series The House We Live In as well as, ultimately, Design with Nature. Among his most important projects were the 1962 Plan for the Valleys in Baltimore County, Md.; the Inner Harbor in Baltimore; and The Woodlands in Houston.
Below are some of the remarks delivered by James Corner, chair and associate professor of landscape architecture and regional planning, at the memorial service in London Grove, Pa., not far from McHarg’s home.
Ian McHarg was one of the great cultural figures in 20th-century planning and design. What was it about the man that made him so great, so memorable? Certainly his youth spent in the depressed areas near industrial, poverty-stricken Glasgow, on the one side, and the Celtic, rural countryside of the Firth Valley and the Western Highlands, on the other, left a strongly formative impression upon the young McHarg. As too did his term in the British Parachute Brigade, serving in war-stricken Italy during World War II, again exposing him to the polar opposites of horror and war on the one side and beauty, peace, and grace in the Mediterranean villages and bays on the other. Soon after, of course, he earned his professional degrees in both landscape architecture and city planning from Harvard, and then returned to Scotland with wife and child to then suffer horribly from pulmonary tuberculosis. Here again, he escaped the acrid gloom of the Scottish hospital to which he was originally confined, and to which he almost had to undergo life-debilitating surgery, to find solace and recovery in a Swiss Alpine hospice—another experience of almost transcendental dimension for him. These early experiences conditioned in the young McHarg an absolute will and determination to bring the benevolent, spiritual, and life-giving forces of nature into cities and metropolitan regions, where of course most people actually live. He did not turn away from the City or from Culture—as many environmentalists continue to do—but rather sought a new union between Man and Nature, a new union that would be forged through design with nature.
Here, of course, his work is legendary —his teaching and leadership at Penn, his developing of a unique and world-changing curriculum and method that fully transformed the fields of landscape architecture and planning, and of course his writing of Design with Nature—perhaps singly the most seminal and important book in our field of the 20th century. He painted an incredibly rich and exuberant picture of the organic world and the various forms of life it continues to body forth, and from this he conjured up the vision for a more wholesome and productive world metropolis.
His brilliance was recognized world-wide, and he went on to be rewarded with the Harvard Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Medal of Art, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture, and 12 other international medals and awards, including the very prestigious Japan Prize in City and Regional Planning.
But throughout all this time, was not the opposition of violence and decay on the one hand, and benevolence and life on the other still persistent in the man himself? For these two polarities conditioned not only his determination and mission but also his very character. McHarg was no soft, gentle, tree-hugging environmentalist —he was tough, resilient, cunning, strong, outspoken, argumentative. In this sense, he was urban, political, savvy, and intellectual. But at the same time, he was perhaps the most generous, gracious, caring man I ever knew. Inside, he was a soft, poetic soul—a wonderful conversationalist and friend, at once both indestructible and yielding.
I will miss his presence in the world, his big lanky body, that unforgettable face, itself a rich topography of depth and insight, his quick mind and humor-filled wit, his gracious charm and originality, his constant activity and boundless zeal for life. But when I think of him now, I am reminded how nothing silenced him to the point of reverent awe other than the image (and the science) of the two extreme scales of life —the cellular, microscopic scale of organic growth and adaptation, and the cosmic scale of Planet Earth spinning in an endless galaxy. I feel that from his new vantage point in heaven, he will be silently smiling, gazing upon the marvels of life, marvels no longer seen from the perspective of an ever-anthropocentric textbook, but now from the spirit-matter of the cosmos itself … The earth will miss you, Ian McHarg.
Harold Stassen, 1907-2001
By Mark F. Bernstein
National obituaries for the Honorable Harold E. Stassen Hon’48, who died on March 4 at the age of 93, made much of his many bids for public office. Known as the perennial candidate, among other offices, he ran for president of the United States nine times, governor of Minnesota four times, governor of Pennsylvania twice, the U.S. Senate twice, and mayor of Philadelphia once. Often overlooked among the tributes was the one presidency Stassen did attain—that of the University of Pennsylvania, which he led from 1948 to 1953.
Few university presidents have ever boasted a more impressive resume. Stassen was first elected governor of Minnesota when he was only 31 and delivered the keynote address at the 1940 Republican convention, where he helped clinch the nomination for Wendell Willkie. Reelected twice, he resigned in 1943 to go on active duty in the Navy, serving as chief of staff to Admiral William Halsey in the South Pacific. President Franklin Roosevelt named Stassen to the American delegation to the first United Nations conference in San Francisco, where he helped write the UN Charter and was voted the most effective delegate.
In 1948 Stassen made his first and strongest bid for the White House. After a series of upset victories in the early primaries, polls showed him the favorite of convention delegates and indicated that he would beat President Harry Truman in a head-to-head race. He became a hero to many young Republicans, including Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy, and future Chief Justice Warren Burger. When Stassen fell short of victory at the GOP convention in Philadelphia that summer, Penn pounced.
Though Stassen was not the only politician-president in the Ivy League at that time—Dwight Eisenhower had just taken over at Columbia—many questioned the selection of a man who had no ties to Penn or experience as an academic administrator. In several respects, though, his tenure was successful. Penn was in the middle of a more-or-less perpetual financial crunch and Stassen’s skill as a fundraiser was put to good use. He succeeded in raising money and cutting costs, choosing to focus limited resources on a few prestige departments at the expense of others. In 1951, he bravely spoke out against a bill in the Pennsylvania legislature that would have required loyalty oaths from professors.
He also sought to maximize the exposure of Penn’s nationally successful football teams. Proclaiming that the University’s goal was “victory with honor,” Stassen replaced longtime athletic director H. Jamison Swarts with brash young Francis T. “Franny” Murray and added Notre Dame and other national powerhouses to the schedule. Coming as he did from the Big Ten, Stassen argued that academic excellence was not incompatible with gridiron success, but Penn’s Ivy rivals, who had grown tired of losing to the Quakers and had no desire to keep up with a big-time program, dropped the team from their schedules. Eventually, Stassen was forced to curb Penn’s football aspirations as the price of securing membership in the Ivy League.
Football was at the center of the other major controversy of Stassen’s presidency: his fight with the NCAA over televising Quaker home games. By the late 1940s Penn was one of only two colleges in the country with a national TV contract, a considerable source of
revenue for a cash-strapped university. When the NCAA voted to restrict the number of televised games in order to stop the slide in gate attendance, Stassen defied the order and signed a $200,000 contract with ABC. Forced to back down when the NCAA threatened
to expel the Quakers, the incident unnecessarily damaged Penn’s national reputation and further soured relations with the other Ivy colleges.
Whatever his successes or failures, it was hard to shake the suspicion that Stassen prized Penn chiefly as a staging ground for his next assault on the White House. In his letter of acceptance to the trustees, he noted that he would take office, “subject to the fulfillment of my speaking duties” on behalf of Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the 1948 Republican nominee. That was a sign of things to come, for in just over four years in office Stassen took two leaves of absence, to make an extended speaking tour in Asia and to campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1952.
In all, Stassen’s tenure was not a particularly rewarding one, either for him or for Penn, and it was clear when he resigned to take a post in the Eisenhower Administration that he and the trustees were relieved to be rid of each other. Stassen kept few ties to the University after his term ended, but went on to build a successful law practice and continued to dabble in politics. In 1963, as president of the American Baptist Convention, he joined the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the march on Washington. And every four years, it seemed, he would seek his party’s nomination for president, earning a brief, increasingly dismissive paragraph in the newspapers.
At his 90th birthday party three years ago, Stassen received tributes from Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, among others, while the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously urged President Clinton to award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Though living in a nursing home, Stassen was still busily promoting a 129-page proposal to revise the United Nations Charter and filing yet again for the Minnesota gubernatorial race that Jesse Ventura, a very different sort of maverick, eventually won.
Even in old age, there was something Stassen found vital in tilting at windmills, something that lent his lonely career an odd sort of gallantry. It was fitting that his favorite lines of poetry came from Robert Browning:
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?
Mark Bernstein has written for the Gazette on a Penn-Princeton football game played at the Academy of Music in 1889 [December 1997] and math professor Herbert S. Wilf [May 1998]. His book on Ivy League football will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press this fall, and he is at work on a biography of Harold Stassen.
