Obituaries | Faculty

Stephen Crites, Hedding Professor of Moral Science and Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, died Sept. 13, 2007, at the age of 76.

A graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University, he majored in philosophy and concentrated in music. He then attended Yale, earning a Bachelor of Divinity degree and a PhD in philosophical theology. An ordained Methodist minister, he served as pastor of Grace Methodist Church in Stonington, Conn., and later as Wesleyan’s chaplain. He also taught at Yale Divinity School and at Colgate University.

Professor Crites joined the Wesleyan Religion Department faculty in 1961, later moving to the Philosophy Department. He was a much-loved faculty member who taught courses in the Philosophy of Religion and related fields, focusing on 19th-century European philosophy and religious thought, with a special interest in Hegel and Kierkegaard.

“Stephen Crites was an inspiring teacher, a thoughtful, engaged scholar, and a passionate and caring member of the campus community,” noted Wesleyan President Michael S. Roth ’78. “I remember Stephen vividly from my student days,” Roth added, “and have met many alumni over the years whose lives were enriched by his devotion to teaching and to finding connections between narrative and experience, between faith and philosophy.”

A widely published scholar and editor of several journals, his books include Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking: From the Early Writings through the Phenomenology of Spirit (Penn. State University Press, 1998). A gifted musician and singer, he performed a varied repertoire of works.

After 40 years of service, Prof. Crites retired from Wesleyan in 2001. In addition to his wife, Ann, he is survived by his four daughters, four stepchildren, and eight grandchildren.

A memorial service was held this fall at the Wesleyan Chapel.

PHILIPPA M. COUGHLAN, 75, a clinical psychologist who was the founder and for nearly 40 years the director of Wesleyan’s Office of Behavioral Health for Students (OBHS), died Mar. 17, 2011, after a brief illness. A graduate of Boston University, she received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she worked with Carl Rogers. At Wisconsin, she was a principal in the post-Vatican II transformation of the University Catholic Center. Following an NIMH post-doctoral fellowship at the Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute, she was appointed to the faculty in the University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate school before joining the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. While there she was invited by Wesleyan to become head of the mental health service. Many generations of students benefited from her professional skills, diligent work, and caring support. She was a pioneer in the field of behavioral health for college students and spent a lifetime making a positive difference in young people’s lives. She held a Diplomate in clinical psychology and was a member of the American Psychological Association, the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology, the Society for Psychotherapy Research, and the Association of Social Psychiatry. For eight years she served as the chair of the Connecticut Board of Mental Health and Addiction Services and as a Governor’s appointee to the Community Mental Health Strategy Board. Her publications were in psychotherapy, instrumentation (process and outcome), mental retardation, and sexual violence. She is survived by her husband Neil and son John, daughter-in-law Karen and grandson Patrick, brother-in-law Paul, sister-in-law Tina, and nieces Nicole and Monica.

ROBERT E. BROWN, a distinguished ethnomusicologist who taught at Wesleyan from 1962 to 1971, died Nov. 29, 2005. He was 78. A U.S. Navy veteran of World War II, he attended Ithaca College, Cornell University and the University of California at Los Angeles. He reportedly coined the term ‘world music’, by which he meant study based on the presence of living musicians so that students have direct contact with master musicians. An expert in the music of India and Indonesia, he founded the nonprofit Center for World Music and was a pioneer in making the music of Indonesia available internationally. He also established a music school and research center in Payangan, Bali, to which students, teachers and performers come from all over the world.

MICHAEL J. BRENNAN, 79, professor of Economics emeritus, died Nov. 26, 2007. A graduate of DePaul University, he received a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He then joined the faculty of Brown University, where he became professor of economics and dean of the graduate school. In 1974 he came to Wesleyan, where he was vice president for academic affairs until 1978, when he joined the Economics faculty and served there, including as department Chair, until his retirement in 1993. He was interested primarily in quantitative methods in economics, and he worked with numerous professional organizations, both academic and administrative.

SPENCER J. BERRY, professor of biology emeritus, died Nov. 21, 2005. He was 72. After receiving a bachelor?s degree from Williams, a master?s from Wesleyan, and a Ph.D. from Western Reserve University, he joined the Wesleyan faculty, where he taught for 35 years. An expert in the mechanisms of insect development, his research was focused on the development of insect embryos, maternal messenger RNA, and cytoskeletal elements. He published more than 40 papers and held a National Institutes of Health award from 1971?76. An active member of the Wesleyan community, he was also an environmentalist who served on several local land-use boards and was an original member of the Middlefield Land Trust. He is survived by his wife, Susan Wylie Berry, MALS ?79; three children; and five grandchildren.

Howard Bernstein, a long-time visiting professor at Wesleyan, died of cancer on Jan. 15, 2007, at the age of 63. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the City College of the City University of New York and a doctorate in history from Columbia. Before coming to Wesleyan he taught at Brooklyn College, City College, York University, and Yale University. A world-renowned expert on the work of the German scholar G. W. Leibniz, he was a major contributor to a series of international conferences on Leibniz held in Germany in the early 1980s. He also published a number of works on Diderot, Einstein, and on Marxist philosophy. He taught at Wesleyan from 1979 to 2001 in a number of areas, including the College of Letters, the History Department, the programs in Educational Studies and Science in Society, and in Wesleyan’s Graduate Liberal Studies Program. He was also a major contributor to the Masters of Arts in Teaching Program. In addition, he supervised a large number of senior honors theses. For the past five years, he was a mentor and educator at Suffield Academy in Suffield, Conn. Among those who survive are his wife, Joan Leslie Bernstein, and their immediate family.

FRANCES HOPE GREENE AREY, a former librarian in the Science Library, died Feb. 4, 2006. Her husband, Sheldon C. Arey, and a brother survive.

FRANKLIN D. REEVE, a poet, translator, and former professor of Russian Language and Literature, died June 28, 2013. He was 84. A graduate of Princeton University, he received master’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia University. He taught at Columbia before joining the faculty at Wesleyan, where he taught full-time until he decided to devote more time to his writing and became a part-time faculty member. He published more than 30 books, including 10 volumes of poetry and translations of Russian authors. One book chronicled a trip to the Soviet Union in 1962 with Robert Frost on a good-will mission requested by President John F. Kennedy. At an early point in his career, while in graduate school, he began acting professionally, but gave it up because he feared that immersing himself in dramatic characters might erode his own poetic voice. He also founded the journal The Poetry Review. He translated Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1970 Nobel lecture and delivered the keynote address at the International Conference of Translators of Russian Literature in Moscow in 2007. His first three marriages ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife, Laura C. Stevenson; a son from his first marriage; a daughter and two sons from his second marriage; two stepdaughters; his sister and brother; and 18 grandchildren.

REGINALD BARTHOLOMEW, a senior diplomat and ambassador who taught at Wesleyan from 1964 to 1968 before joining the government, died Aug. 26, 2012, at age 76. Always interested in working overseas, he passed the Foreign Service exam as a sophomore at Dartmouth College. After graduating in 1958 with degrees in history and political science, he attended graduate school at the University of Chicago, where he received his master’s in political science, worked toward his doctorate, and taught, in addition to spending a year in France studying French politics. He then took a job teaching European government and politics at Wesleyan, where he met Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times reporter who worked with him later in the Defense and State departments, and who was teaching at Wesleyan as well. In 1968 Mr. Gelb persuaded him to join the staff at the Pentagon, from which he moved to and from various departments in different roles. During his long tenure, he served four presidents, negotiated for nuclear disarmament with the Soviet Union and for the preservation of American military bases in Europe, served as ambassador to Spain and Italy, and survived a bomb attack while ambassador to Lebanon in 1984. He received an honorary degree from Wesleyan in 1985. Among those who survive are his wife, Rose-Anne Dognin Bartholomew, three sons, a daughter, seven grandchildren, and his brother.

LAUREL F. APPEL, adjunct associate professor of biology, died Mar. 4, 2013, at age 50. A graduate of Oberlin College, she received a PhD in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993, when she moved to Connecticut. At Wesleyan, she also directed the Ronald E. McNair Program, which supports and nurtures first-generation college students and students in underrepresented groups for entry into graduate programs. She is survived by her husband, Wesleyan Professor of Biology Michael Weir, two children, her mother, two brothers, and three nieces and nephews. Her father died on April 19, 2013, six weeks after his daughter.