Obituaries | Faculty

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.

Manchester, professor of history emeritus at Wesleyan, was 82 years old and had been in declining health after suffering two strokes.

The author of 18 books translated into 20 languages, Manchester first acquired an international reputation in 1967 with his account of the assassination of President Kennedy, The Death of a President: November 1963, which he had written at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy.

His other books include Goodbye Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and his biography of Douglas MacArthur, American Caesar, nominated for a National Book Award.

Manchester had expressed doubt that his Churchill trilogy would ever be completed. The first two volumes, Visions of Glory: 1874–1931 and Alone: 1932–1940, were published in 1983 and 1988, respectively, but poor health had prevented him from completing the third.

On May 21, Little, Brown and Co. announced that, with Manchester’s consent, Paul Reid, a feature writer at the Palm Beach Post, would help complete the final book about Britain’s World War II leader.

 

[Editor’s Note: Arthur Wensinger, professor of German studies emeritus, recalls his friendship with Manchester.]

We both came to Middletown in 1955, Bill to AEP as an editor, I to the German Department at the college. We knew each other only socially at first, at parties with the Lockwoods, Winslows, Knapps, Thompsons, Reeds, Boyntons, Gomez-Ibañezes, Coleys, Greens, Burfords, McAllesters, Viggianis, Seases—the other names of 45 years ago. But it was not until I was living at 10 Wesleyan Place that I saw more of him and Judy at Ruth and Joe Peoples’ nonstop evening open house at that address.

Our friendship ripened very gradually, though it was never what I would call a really close one, more of a collegial intimacy. Still, more often than not, if the two of us were at a gathering, we would find ourselves sitting together—me mostly listening to him. He fascinated me with his profound occupations and preoccupations, his talk of his books and the men he wrote about, his invasions and absorptions of their personae. It was a kind of utter commitment that I rarely, if ever, saw in another… And I much enjoyed his gossip about the high and mighty.

What he saw in me, I do not know. Was it the Mencken in Bill’s past and his strong attraction for German history and culture? Along the way, and especially later when he was working on the Krupp family history, he would exploit my knowledge of the language and its literature. It can also have been his interest in my (tenuous) connection with the Marine Corps: my uncle Walter W., a lifetime Marine, a general who among many other ventures led his regiment in the invasion of Iwo Jima. Bill could “identify.”

And there were other little connections. As a newspaper man, Bill was once inordinately amused by a rare piece of ephemera I had kept from my time in Munich in 1948, an issue of the Muenchener Merkur that had, uniquely, picked up the Chicago Tribune‘s notorious blooper about Dewey defeating Truman. He had never heard of it and absolutely had to have a photocopy of it for his office. That was one of the very few small favors I was ever able to do for him. It doesn’t begin to compare with the inscribed copies of his books that he regularly sent me, some with that cartoon self-portrait sketch.

It was hard to know what one could do for Bill Manchester. He was a most guarded man; he had to keep that massive encyclopedia and that trove of serial archives delicately balanced in his mind, lest it should spill over—which, of course, it did on occasion. Then he took his retreats. The last time I saw Bill was about a week and a half before he died. He asserted that he was quite ready; it was an unequivocal assertion. Driving home after not quite an hour with him, I pulled over and, I’m not sure exactly why, wrote down a few things he had said, some of them verbatim:

“After all those other things, now the doctors told me I have stomach cancer, inoperable. I will not have chemo or radiation just to eke out a few more undignified weeks of life.

“Have you heard that I’ve decided to go with this fellow from Florida? He’ll work on the third volume. He seems good for the job. I have quite a few pages already written, he’ll work in my Olin office…It’s not an act of final desperation. I’ve already turned down others who did not seem right. I want that trilogy finished.

“My house goes to Wesleyan, you know—they have been good to me. But there is a string attached. It is for the use of faculty only. It’s a nice place. John [Martin, the architect] did well by us. Now it’s for someone else.

“I am prepared for death and not afraid of it. I have been close to death before and seen a lot of it.” Some people claim, he said, that you can help a person die. “You can’t. It is something you must do by yourself.”

And this, verbatim: “I am unencumbered by any notion of an afterlife….If there is one for me, it will be in my books.”

He was very tough, no sentimentality. I had said I would stay for ten minutes, but it was now almost an hour. It was clear that it was time for me to go. He had a surprisingly firm handshake. I asked if I might return for another visit. The last thing he said was, “You can come back any time you want,” and he said my name. But I didn’t go to see him again.

BARBARA E. MACEACHERN, the director of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Wesleyan from 1981 to 2000, died Dec. 24, 2010, at age 71. She received her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in English from the University of Rochester. She was a professor of English at Mount Holyoke College, the University of Rochester, the University of Southern California, and the University of Wisconsin before coming to Wesleyan. Active in the community and in professional associations, she was a past president of the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs and a former managing editor of the Journal of the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs. Guided by her deep belief in the value of a liberal arts education, she gave students and instructors the freedom to explore both traditional and unconventional paths of study, influencing the academic lives of hundreds of graduate students and educators. In recent years she became devoted to environmental conservation and historic preservation causes. She is survived by her son, Alexander S.B. Horn; her daughter, Victoria Elaine MacEachern Horn; one grandson; a sister; her husband, Nelson Thomas Horn; and a large extended family.

Robert Lucid, professor emeritus of English at the University of Pennsylvania died Dec. 12, 2006, at the age of 76. He earned an A.B. from the University of Washington and an A.M. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He was an assistant professor of English at Wesleyan from 1959 until 1964. He then joined UPenn’s English department in 1964, where he remained until his retirement in 1996. His research interests focused on Norman Mailer, about whom he had edited two books. Before he passed away, he was in the process of completing Mailer’s authorized biography. Dr. Lucid is survived by his son, John Lucid, a brother and a sister.

STANLEY LEBERGOTT, 91, a retired economist and Chester D. Hubbard Professor of Economics and Social Sciences, Emeritus, whose influential books and articles maintained that consumerism had brought positive changes to the American standard of living, died July 24, 2009. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, both in economics, from the University of Michigan. Affiliated with the U.S. Department of Labor, the International Labor Office, and the U.S. Bureau of the Budget for 20 years, his early work focused on measures of unemployment, the size and composition of the labor force, wage determination, family income and child welfare. In 1962 he joined the Wesleyan faculty as professor of economics, becoming University Professor in 1970 and retiring in 1995 as professor emeritus. He was a pivotal scholar in his field and a prolific author. In addition to more than 50 articles, his books include: Manpower in Economic Growth: The American Record Since 1800 (McGraw Hill, 1964); Men Without Work (Prentice Hall, 1964); The American Economy: Income, Wealth, and Want (Princeton, 1976); The Americans: An Economic Record (Norton, 1984); Pursuing Happiness: American Consumers in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 1993); andConsumer Expenditures: New Measures and Old Motives (Princeton, 1996). Wesleyan Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Peter Kilby writes: “The Lebergott scholarly paradigm is a distinctive one. The conventional paradigm entails placing the problem in context, reviewing the ruling interpretations, setting out an appropriately specified model, and concluding with an evaluation of econometric results. Lebergott, by contrast, moves directly to the quiddity of the problem itself. With unusual clarity of vision he isolates three or four key ingredients, and then proceeds with shattering simplicity to conceive a single measure—typically one painstakingly constructed from unconventional sources—that captures the direction and force of the underlying cause. Thus the calculation of two profit rates—on U.S. foreign investment and on the national capital stock—reveals the motive force behind U.S. imperialism at the turn of the century.” Lebergott traced how consumer expenditure has been the means to improved health, reduced drudgery, greater privacy, and to a vast expansion in diversified experience, which lies at the core of human happiness. His son, Steven Lebergott, predeceased him. Survivors include his wife, Ruth Wellington Lebergott MAT ’69; his daughter, Karen Lebergott; and step–grandchildren, including StarRose Keyes–Lebergott ’10 and Sunshine Vogt ’98.

BURTON C. HALLOWELL ’36, former Wesleyan economics professor, died Nov. 21, 2006. (See 1936.)

PAUL HAAKE, Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Emeritus, died Dec. 3, 2011. He was 79. After receiving bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University, he did postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology and joined the faculty of UCLA in 1961. He came to Wesleyan in 1968 and during his 25 years as a full-time teacher and scholar at the university contributed to the development of the PhD program in Chemistry and the formation of the Molecular Biology and Biochemistry department. His doctoral research on hydrolysis and isotopic exchange resulted in the 1961 publication of the paper “Hydrolysis and Exchange in Esters of Phosphoric Acid,” a seminal paper in phosphorus chemistry. He taught a popular series of courses for non-science majors and also participated in community issues. In 1975 he was appointed to Connecticut’s Nuclear Power Evaluation Council, a commission concerned with the safety of nuclear power. In 2004, after a dozen years in which he divided his time between teaching at Wesleyan and various other pursuits, he fully retired from Wesleyan.

WALT GROCKOWSKI, retired athletic trainer at Wesleyan, died Oct. 26, 2006. He was a veteran of the U.S. Navy, where he served as a pharmacist?s mate. A graduate of the New Haven College of Physical Therapy, he began his 39-year tenure in the Wesleyan athletic department in 1947 and became the head trainer in 1973. He was one of four athletic trainers for the U.S. Olympic Team during the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan. He was also active in Middletown athletics, assisting with parks department and American Legion events. He was inducted into the National Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame in 1984 and the Middletown Sports Hall of Fame in 1995. He retired from Wesleyan in 1986 but remained active in the community.

WALTER GOTTSCHALK, professor emeritus of mathematics at Wesleyan, died Feb. 15, 2004, of mesenteric ischemia. He was 85. In the early 1940’s, he and his doctoral adviser at the University of Virginia, G. A. Hedlund, introduced the field of topological dynamics: the abstract study of those properties of the set of all solutions of a differential equation that can be determined without solving the equation. In 1955 he and Hedlund published the seminal monograph “Topological Dynamics.” The influence of this work continues and can be seen in areas such as the study of chaotic behavior. He also had a keen interest in the relationship of art and mathematics, particularly in the development of three dimensional objects and sculpture. He showed his constructed polyhedra in a one-man exhibit, “Mathematical Sculpture: Polyhedral Forms” at the Davison Art Center in 1965. He joined the faculty at Wesleyan in 1963 and twice served a term as chairman of the Mathematics Department. He was predeceased by his wife, Margaret Gottschalk. He is survived by a daughter, a son, and four grandchildren.