Obituaries | Faculty

MELVIN STRAUSS, Adjunct Professor of Music, Emeritus, died Sept. 5, 2012, at age 83. He received his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University and his master’s from New York University. He also attended the Juilliard School of Music. He worked with Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he was involved with the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Contemporary Music Weeks, and came to prominence in contemporary music circles. He was appointed conductor of the Fromm Players at Tanglewood as recipient of the prestigious Fromm Fellowship in Contemporary Music, and also received the Koussevitsky Conducting Prize by the Boston Symphony. After serving as President of Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts from 1975 to 1985, he came to Wesleyan, where he directed and conducted both the University Orchestra and Concert Choir, and served as director of the Private Music Lessons program, which he helped to rejuvenate. He also served as Associate Conductor at the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and taught at SUNY-Buffalo, the University of Pennsylvania, and Rutgers. He co-founded and conducted the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá and in 1998 led the Wesleyan Symphony Orchestra during the “John Cage at Wesleyan” festival, one performance of which was publicly released as a CD. Survivors include his daughter, Jamie Strauss Cohon, and two grandchildren. and Rutgers. He co-founded and conducted the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá and in 1998 led the Wesleyan Symphony Orchestra during the “John Cage at Wesleyan” festival, one performance of which was publicly released as a CD. Survivors include his daughter, Jamie Strauss Cohon, and two grandchildren.

SATURNINO SALAS, assistant professor of mathematics from 1960 to 1965 (and father of Wesleyan’s Director of Strategic Initiatives Charles G. Salas MA ’85) died June 2, 2012. He was 81. After attending Princeton University, he served in the U.S. Air Force for four years and received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University in 1959. In addition to teaching at Wesleyan he taught at Yale University and at the University of Connecticut before retiring from academia to devote himself to the writing of mathematics textbooks. Predeceased by his wife, Judith Eckart Salas, he is survived by his four children, 11 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, two brothers, and a sister.

STEVEN B. BUTTNER ’61, 72, a management consultant and former dean at Wesleyan, died Aug. 1, 2012. He was a member of EQV. He received a master’s in Russian Studies from the University of Wisconsin and was a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University in Eastern European and Russian Medieval History. After teaching at Queens College, he joined the administration at Wesleyan, where he was a lecturer in history and Dean of the Class of 1974. He subsequently built his career as a management consultant, specializing in leadership assessment and coaching. Survivors include his wife, Jeri Butler Buttner; his two children and their mother, Doreen Buttner; his brother; and a large extended family.

MARK BARLOW, dean at Wesleyan from 1957 to 1965 and former Trustee of the University, died June 23, 2012, at age 87. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he received his degree from Wesleyan. A member of Eclectic, he received a master’s degree from Colgate University and a doctorate of education from Cornell University. In 1957, he became Dean of Students at Wesleyan and later Dean of the University. Because of his age, the students dubbed him “the boy dean,” but he quickly developed a reputation for handling student academic and disciplinary issues with a sense of humor and an appreciation for individual personalities. He supported selected students who participated as Freedom Riders in the South during the civil rights era. In 1965 he returned to Cornell as vice president for student affairs and subsequently became Vice Provost. He received a Distinguished Alumnus Award from Wesleyan in 1981 and a Wesleyan University Service Award in 2011; he had served as Trustee from 1968 to 1971. He is survived by his wife, Jane Atwood Barlow, three children, and four grandchildren.

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.