The University of Chicago Magazine

TRUSTEES

William B. Graham, SB’32, JD’36, business executive and philanthropist, died January 24 in Kenilworth, IL. He was 94. Former chief executive and board chair of Baxter International, Graham was a patent lawyer before joining the medical-device and pharmaceutical company in 1945 as a vice president and manager. A former president of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and a founder of Millennium Park, Graham was a life trustee of the University, and he and his wife, Catherine V. Graham, were the chief benefactors of the Graham School of Continuing Studies, which bears their name. His first wife, Edna, died in 1981. Survivors include his wife; two daughters; two sons; 11 grandchildren, including Kelley Graham, MBA’00; and 11 great-grandchildren.

FACULTY AND STAFF

Katie Appleby Nash, former dean of students in the College, died December 16 in Chicago of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. She was 70. Nash began her 40-year University career as an undergraduate adviser in 1960, moving up the ranks to dean, a post she held from 1991 to 2001. Overseeing academic advising and degree programs, tutoring, scholarships, and personal and academic counseling, she increased the number of advisers and moved registration online—ending the undergraduate ritual of “sleep out.” In retirement she volunteered at the Field Museum. Survivors include two sons and three grandchildren.

Thomas R. Trabasso, the Irving B. Harris professor emeritus in psychology, died May 22, 2005, of pancreatic cancer. He was 69. After teaching posts at UCLA, Princeton, and Minnesota, he joined the Chicago faculty in 1979. Beginning his career as a mathematical psychologist with interests in concept identification and concept learning in the late 1970s he began to focus on high-level comprehension processes as revealed by causal network analyses of discourse. The author of some 100 journal articles, he was a founding member of the Society for Text and Discourse; a Festschrift in his honor, Narrative Comprehension, Causality, and Coherence, was published in 1999. Survivors include his wife, Chicago psychology professor Nancy L. Stein.

Thomas Lee Whisler, MBA’47, PhD’53, professor emeritus in the Graduate School of Business, died February 6 in Highland Park, IL. He was 85. A WWII Navy veteran, Whisler taught at the University of Missouri before joining the GSB in 1953, retiring in 1990. One of the first researchers to study computers’ impact on business, he wrote Management Organization and the Computer (1960) with George Shultz. He also studied performance appraisal systems and corporate and nonprofit governance. A self-taught musician, he played the clarinet, piano, banjo, and guitar and performed in a vocal quartet. Survivors include his second wife, Judith; a son; a daughter; two stepdaughters; and seven grandchildren.

1920s

Helen Whitmarsh Bay, PhB’29, a self-described “compulsive volunteer,” died November 27 in Middletown, RI. She was 98. Married in Bond Chapel to Maturin B. Bay, SB’28, she volunteered for the PTA, women’s clubs, garden clubs, and service groups. Active in the Congregational Church, she also raised funds to help brain-injured children. Survivors include a son, two granddaughters, three step grandchildren, and six step great-grandchildren.

1930s

Ruth Earnshaw Lo, PhB’31, an educator and writer who lived in China during the Cultural Revolution, died January 12 in Boulder, CO. She was 95. Lo, whose post-graduation job was as the Magazine’s associate editor, married John C. F. Lo, PhD’35, in Shanghai on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War. After a decade as refugees, in 1947 the couple returned with their two children to Shanghai to resume teaching at Hua Chung College, moving to Zhongshan University in 1953. Lo’s memoir, In the Eye of the Typhoon (1980), describes the family’s ostracization because of its Western connections (denied medical treatment led to John Lo’s 1969 death). Finally permitted to return to the States in 1979, she is survived by a son, a daughter, and two grandchildren.

Truman K. Gibson Jr., PhB’33, JD’35, an attorney who fought segregation during WWII, died December 23 in Chicago. He was 93. Chief adviser on racial affairs to the Secretary of War, he was the only black official on a post-war commission whose recommendations led to the desegregation of the armed forces. As Joe Louis’s attorney and an officer of the International Boxing Club, he was a major boxing promoter in the 1950s until legal troubles (antitrust law violations and conspiracy and extortion convictions) intervened. His life is chronicled in his 2005 memoir, Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America. Survivors include a daughter, two grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild.

Florence Kahen Sherman, PhB’33, a social worker and social-work administrator turned homemaker and volunteer, died December 24, in Watertown, CT. She was 93. A longtime resident of Chicago and Hyde Park, she was active in many organizations, serving as president of the Chicago Women’s Division of the American Jewish Congress. Survivors include two sons, Malcolm J. Sherman, SB’60, SM’60, and Joel A. Sherman, MD’67; her brother, Harold I. Kahen, AB’38, JD’40; five grandchildren, including Michael J. Sherman, AB’91; and five great-grandchildren.

Daniel M. MacMaster, X’34, former president of the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI), died December 26 in Chicago Heights, IL. He was 92. Attending the College on a work-study scholarship program, he was helping to develop an MSI exhibit when the Depression cut off his scholarship, and he remained at the MSI, becoming its president in 1967. Advising on the development of the New York Public Library and the 1964–65 World’s Fair Hall of Science, he served on many Chicago civic boards. After his 1978 retirement he worked on museum projects around the world. Survivors include a daughter, Jane M. Lightell, AM’68; a son; and two grandchildren.

Lorine Crocker Mays, SB’37, died January 23 in Chicago. She was 89. The only black woman in her College class, she worked as a medical technician before becoming a technician with the Manhattan Project. At age 50, after years as a full-time mother of seven, she became a substitute teacher, earned teaching certification, and then taught second-grade for 20 years. In retirement she traveled the world and volunteered with an adult literacy program. Her survivors include four sons, three daughters, and 16 grandchildren.

Shirley Ann (“Sh’Ann”) Sondel Krueger, SB’39, a homemaker and sailor, died January 19 in Fort Lauderdale, FL. She was 89. With her husband, Joseph D. Krueger, AB’38, she was a member of the Chicago Yacht Club, winning and placing in the Port Huron and Chicago-Mackinac races, before moving to Fort Lauderdale in 1968, where she was active in her local church. Survivors include three daughters, six grandchildren, and a great-grandson.

1940s

Marvin Braude, AB’41, a former Los Angeles councilman, died December 7 in Rancho Mirage, CA. He was 85. A member of Chicago’s social-sciences faculty before moving to California in the early 1950s, Braude was a founder of Scientific Data Systems (later bought out by the Xerox Corporation). Elected in 1965 to the L.A. Council’s 11th District seat (a post he held until term limits forced him out in 1997), he was the council’s environmentalist voice, pushing for a beach bike path and creating the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, banning smoking in public places, and halting offshore drilling. His wife, psychiatrist Marjorie Sperry Braude, AB’44, SB’48, MD’50, died February 7, 2005; among survivors are two daughters, including Ann Braude, AM’78, and two grandchildren.

Evelyn Steinberg Smith, AB’42, a homemaker and social worker, died December 1 in St. Paul, MN. She was 83. Smith, who earned a master’s in social work from the University of Minnesota, belonged to numerous Jewish and social-service organizations and was an active member of Temple of Aaron in St. Paul. Survivors include her husband, Milton, and three daughters.

Charles W. Stanley, SB’43, a chemist, died January 13 while vacationing in San Diego. He was 84. Hired to do plutonium separation research for the Manhattan Project, he worked at Chicago, Oak Ridge, TN, and Los Alamos, NM, and was present for the 1948 Enewietok Atoll nuclear test, where his hands were burned by radiation. After graduate work at Notre Dame University, he returned to his native Kansas City, MO, working first for the Midwest Research Institute and then the Bayer Agricultural Division, retiring in 1983. Helen, his wife of 55 years, died in August 2005. Survivors include two sons and five grandchildren.

Faith (“Punky”) Johnson Hawkins, X’43, died October 17, in Oregon. Survivors include two daughters, including Pamela Green Hawkins, AB’68; five grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Richard Philbrick, X’43, a religion and education writer, died January 25 in Silver Spring, MD. He was 85. After 18 years at the Chicago Tribune, where his religion beat included all Chicago area churches and his education beat numbered 126 colleges and universities, Philbrick retired to a 20-year career editing and writing book reviews for the Catholic News Service. In 2003 he received the Religion Newswriters Association’s lifetime achievement award. Survivors include his wife, Ruth Rowe Philbrick, AB’44, AM’47.

Betty Jane Hewitt, PhB’44, a schoolteacher, died December 14, in Flint, MI. She was 81. A longtime supporter of the Flint Institute of Music, she taught in the Flint public schools for 17 years. Among survivors are her husband, Charles H. Hewitt, AM’49; two daughters, including Deborah A. Zimo, AB’75; and three grandchildren, including Ann E. Zimo, AB’05.

Selma Jean Cohen, AB’41, AM’42, PhD’46, a dance historian, died December 23. She was 85. In the 1950s she reviewed for Dance Observer and the New York Times. A member of the first National Endowment for the Arts Dance Panel in 1966, and the author of several dance histories, she will perhaps be best remembered for editing the International Encyclopedia of Dance (1998), a six-volume work that required 20 years of planning. There are no immediate survivors.

Byron S. Martin, AB’46, AM’47, died August 11 in Flagstaff, AZ. He was 83. A much-decorated veteran of WWII (serving as a pathfinder in U.S. Air Force bombers, with the OSS, and as a staff officer for Admiral Lord Mountbatten) and the Korean War, he was a specialist in financial and corporate public relations with Hill and Knowlton in New York, as well as a professional investor who wrote several books and numerous magazine and newspaper articles. Moving to Flagstaff in 1977, he belonged to the local historical society and the Elks. Survivors include his wife, Julie, and a brother.

Lloyd C. Blair, MBA’47, died August 29 in Sun City, AZ. He was 89. After many years as a personnel administrator at multiple Fortune 500 companies, in 1969 he and his wife, Lulu, began Blair Business Services, Inc. In 1983 they retired, moving from Palatine, IL, to Sun City, where he sang in the Unitarian church choir, edited church bulletins, and helped coordinate music for Sunday services. Survivors include his wife, a son, two daughters, and two grandchildren.

Ruth Wedge Mednick, PhB’47, AM’55, a social-work administrator, died December 2 in Rockville, MD. She was 82. Mednick spent much of her career with the Health and Welfare Council of Central Maryland, first as director of information and referral services and then as the council’s planner. Active in the Baltimore chapter of the U of C Alumni Association, she was the widow of Morton Mednick, PhB’48, SM’52.

1950s

Ralph M. Goldman, AM’48, PhD’51, a political scientist, died July 10, 2005, in Kirkland, WA. He was 85. A specialist in U.S. and transnational party politics, Goldman taught at Chicago (1961–62) and served as a Brookings Institution research associate before embarking on a teaching career at Michigan State University (1956–62) and San Francisco State University (1962–86). He later ran the congressional-studies program at Catholic University of America and founded the nonprofit Center for Party Development. Survivors include his wife, Barbara Alban, daughter Meg Goldman, AB’81, a son, two grandchildren, and a brother.

Norman Gritz, AB’59, AM’61, a professor of English, died September 5 in Paris, of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. He was 69. After teaching at the University of Illinois at Chicago he moved to France in 1968, chairing the language department at Paris’s École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications and teaching at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. Survivors include his wife, Nevenka, and a sister.

1970s

Richard D. Hanna, AB’72, an attorney, died February 26, 2005, in McKinney, TX. He was 54. After earning his JD from the University of Houston, he worked as counsel for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Survivors include a son, a brother, and many aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Paul Collard, MAT’75, a founder of U.S. Robotics, died December 28 in Hyde Park of Huntington’s chorea. He was 53. An applied-physics graduate of the University of Sussex, the British native taught science at the U of C Laboratory High School before joining the University’s Computation Center; with three others he spent evenings working to build a better modem, an effort that became U.S. Robotics. In the 1980s, after hearing a U of C lecture on solar power, he left USR to found Midway Labs, centered on making more environmentally friendly solar power panels. Survivors include his wife, Rebecca Janowitz, U-High’70, and two sons.