Obituaries | Faculty

ROBERT H. WHITMAN, professor of Russian, emeritus, died May 1, 2008, in Berkeley, Calif. He was 78. Whitman was trained as a linguist. He earned a BA from Hamilton College and a PhD from Harvard University, and he joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1959. He left Wesleyan in 1963 and spent a year in the USSR, then at Cornell, the University of Indiana, and the University of California at Berkeley, before returning to Wesleyan in 1971. He was a visiting professor at Yale for one semester, served as chair of the Educational Policy Committee, and taught courses in Old Russian literature and the history of the Russian language. Whitman founded a program in linguistics, with the participation of members of the anthropology, philosophy, English and psychology departments, and for many years taught popular courses in general linguistics, directing numerous honors theses written by students who went on to become professional linguists. He retired from the Wesleyan faculty in 1997. His former colleague, Professor of Russian Priscilla Meyer recalls that “Bob had an extraordinary ability to inspire students to do sophisticated work, both in tutorials and in class, giving students confidence in their insights by exploring the most fruitful dimensions of what they had to say. He enlivened department meetings with his love of linguistic play, and was enormously generous with his time to colleagues as well as students.” She adds that in 1975 he took over a five-days-a-week Russian language class for a month to replace an incapacitated colleague. Professor Whitman is survived by his wife, Fran, of Berkeley, Calif., his daughter, Julie Zai, and two grandchildren.

William Ward, professor of theater and design emeritus, died June 14, 2010. He was 79 years old. Ward came to Wesleyan in 1956, as instructor in art, and he taught at Wesleyan for 42 years, becoming professor of theater and design in 1969. He retired in 1998. He had designed sets for more than 100 plays and concerts at Wesleyan, and he also created graphical and other design work for more than 25 exhibitions and publications. He was one of the principal faculty involved in proposing the Center for the Arts complex, for which he served as design consultant. In a 1995 interview, Bill explained that his vision for the CFA had the pedagogical goal of fostering conversation: “We wanted a cluster of buildings that would surround a central area of interaction, where to walk to the Music Department you would run into art people because they would be out in the middle as well.” Ward relished teaching, saying that it kept him young and inspired, and because “you learn along with your students. You pull, push, cajole, and encourage. But when you see that production happen, you get your reward.” His approach to teaching was interactive: he was a constant presence in the scene shop, working with his hands, teaching students to use woodworking tools and fabricate sets. His home was an extension of his classroom; he and his wife, Mary, frequently hosted gatherings of students and faculty. His departmental colleague and friend, Professor of Theater Emeritus William Francisco, described Ward as “one of the best people I’ve ever worked with, a very good designer. We did difficult productions and they looked great.” Ward is survived by his wife, Mary Ward, of Middletown, their three daughters, and seven grandchildren.

WILLARD B. WALKER, professor of anthropology emeritus, died May 23, 2009, in Skowhegan, Maine. He was 82 years old. Walker was one of the mainstays of the Anthropology Department for more than two decades. He came to Wesleyan in 1966 as an assistant professor, where he and Dave McAllester established anthropology as a department. A specialist in Native American languages and cultures, Walker taught courses on the ethnography of the Southwest, the Southeast, and the Northeast, as well as maintaining a curricular focus on linguistic anthropology.

Walker received a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Harvard, his master’s in anthropology from the University of Arizona, and his Ph.D. in general linguistics, with a minor in cultural anthropology, Slavic linguistics, from Cornell. In 1945 during World War II, he served in the American Field Service, which was attached to the British Eighth Army.

His research interests ranged from Zuni phonology and semantics to the cryptographic use of Choctaw, Comanche and Navajo by the U.S. military in World War II. He was a dedicated fieldworker whose projects had both applied and theoretical aspects. He was particularly interested in native literacy movements and their reception in different communities. He compared the embrace of literacy in the native language among Cherokee to the notable resistance such movements encountered among the Zuni and the Pasamoquoddy of Maine.

In the latter case, he participated in designing the writing system and taught native literacy classes, which proved highly popular and yet singularly ineffective; specifically, he found that while the Pasamoquoddy enjoyed seeing their language graphically represented, they mistrusted native literacy as a constraint on oral creativity and thus a threat to the vitality of their cultural heritage.

After Walker retired from Wesleyan in 1989, he and his wife Perch moved to Canaan, Maine, where he continued to do research and to write, while also tending his beloved trees.

He is survived by his wife of 56 years, C. Pearline “Perch” Walker; two sons, and two granddaughters.

He was predeceased by a sister and a granddaughter.

HING TONG, a leading American mathematician who taught at Wesleyan from 1954–67, and who served as chairman of the mathematics department, died Mar. 4, 2007. He was 85. Born in Canton, China, he came to the United States at the age of 12. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from Columbia. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa and to Sigma Xi, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he studied with John Von Neumann. He also taught at Canton University and at Reed and Barnard colleges. A specialist in algebraic topology and analysis, he is well known for the original proof of the Katetov-Tong insertion theorem. After leaving Wesleyan, he taught at Fordham, where he also served as department chair, and from which he retired in 1984. He is survived by his wife, mathematician Dr. Mary Powderly Tong, five children; and two grandchildren.

David A. Titus, professor emeritus of government, died June 13, 2006. He was 71.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Harvard, he received master’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia. He served in the U.S. Naval Reserve and joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1966 as a lecturer in government, specializing in East Asian studies and comparative politics.

Prior to his retirement in 2004, he had served as chair of the government department, the College of Social Studies, and the East Asian Studies Program. He played a crucial role in establishing East Asian Studies at Wesleyan and was the resident director of the Kyoto Program three times. His doctoral dissertation, published as Palace and Politics in Prewar Japan, established his reputation as a leading scholar of Japanese politics; it was translated into Japanese in 1979.

Calling it a benchmark in the field, Professor of East Asian Studies William Johnston says, “It is impossible to mention the relationship between the Japanese emperor and politics in Japan before 1945 without referencing this work. In addition to penning this classic, David translated significant works of Japanese scholarship into English. During his career at Wesleyan, he also read and suggested changes to a large number of book manuscripts on Japanese political science and history, probably as many as 40 or 50.”

Professor of Government Richard Boyd concurs: “The overriding continuity of his connection to Wesleyan was his abiding dedication to his students in government, the CSS, and East Asian Studies. I doubt he ever turned down a student’s request that he direct a senior honors thesis, with the result that he carried huge thesis advising loads for almost five decades. Once he forgot to include an enrollment ceiling on his introductory class in comparative politics, and about 180 students enrolled. He accepted the challenge, taught them well, and graded all of the papers,”

Remembering him fondly as “the irreverent iconoclast, marching in the opposite direction of whatever trend majority opinion in the world or at Wesleyan seemed to be taking,” and noting that his entire professional career was at Wesleyan, Boyd calls Titus one “who define[d] a university experience for a generation of students and a collegial life for fellow faculty members.”

An avid birder and naturalist, Titus was a founder and president of the Mattabeseck Audubon Society. He enlivened numerous campus occasions over the years with his violin playing. Survivors include two sons, a daughter-in-law, two grandchildren, and a brother and sister.

Daniel Stern, former fellow in the Wesleyan Center for the Humanities, the Boynton Visiting Professor in Creative Writing in the College of Letters, and a Visiting Professor in Letters and English died Jan. 24, 2007, of complications following heart surgery. He was 79. The Cullen Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Houston, he joined its creative writing program in 1992. He wrote nine novels, five short-story collections, several plays and screenplays, and more than 100 essays and reviews. Stern received numerous awards, including the International Prix du Souvenir and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award in Literature. He was also a cellist and had played with jazz musician Charlie Parker as well as with the Indianapolis Symphony. He is survived by his wife, Gloria Stern, one son, and two grandchildren.

BEATRICE L. QUINN, 95, who was employed as a secretary at Wesleyan for 48 years, died Mar. 2, 2008. She served as assistant secretary/assistant treasurer of the Alumni Association, retiring in 1977. A nephew survives.

Nelson Polsby, renowned political scientist, died Feb. 6, 2007, at the age of 72. He was a member of the Wesleyan faculty from 1961 through 1968, rising from the rank of assistant professor to full professor. A prolific author of books and articles, he was also editor of The American Political Science Review, the premier political science journal. Perspectives on Politics noted that Polsby ranked in the top 10 of most frequently cited political scientists among those entering the field when he did. In the early 1980s, Polsby was a visiting professor at the Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., a private think tank that specialized in issues of defense policy and disarmament. He is survived by his wife, Linda, his children, and grandchildren.

GERALD M. MEIER, a leading economist and former Stanford University business and economics professor who led Wesleyan in pivotal curricular innovations during the tenure of President Victor L. Butterfield, died June 21, 2011. He was 88. An alumnus of Reed College, he was a Rhodes Scholar, studied economics at Oxford University, and received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. Before being recruited to Stanford, he taught at Williams College and at Oxford, Wesleyan, and Yale universities. He was on the faculty at Wesleyan from 1954 to 1963, leaving the university as Chester D. Hubbard Professor of Economics and Social Science. During his tenure at Wesleyan he championed then-President Butterfield’s initiatives regarding tutorial-based learning on the undergraduate level. The author of more than 34 books, he helped to introduce the field of development economics to U.S. colleges and universities and is credited with inspiring generations of students to study the economies of less-developed countries. He lectured widely around the world and defined the role of an economist as “both a trustee of the poor and a guardian of rationality.” His 1964 textbook, Leading Issues in Economic Development, now in its eighth edition, has been translated into seven languages and is taught in classrooms worldwide. Survivors include his wife, Gretl Slote Meier, four sons, and six grandchildren.