Harold M. “Hal” Treen Jr. ’50
Harold M. “Hal” Treen Jr. ’50 passed away on Oct. 1, 2018. A full obituary can be found here.
Obituaries
Francis E. Baril ’48
Francis E. Baril ’48 passed away on Aug. 4, 2018. A full obituary can be found here.
John Ritchie Jr. ’43
John Ritchie Jr. ’43 passed away on Nov. 8, 2018. A full obituary can be found here.
Dr. Lester J. Schnell Jr. ’44
It is with great sadness we announce the passing of Dr. Lester J. Schnell Jr. ’44. on November 1, 2018. He was born on Aug. 15, 1922 in New York City. Dr. Schnell was a Garden City resident since 1956. He died peacefully at home surrounded by his family.
Dr. Schnell grew up in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., and Candlewood Isle, Conn. He was an accomplished sailor and athlete. He was president of his senior class at A.B. Davis High School, Mt. Vernon, N.Y. He received his BA degree from Wesleyan University and was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity. His subject concentration was chemistry and Latin. He graduated from Cornell Medical University in 1947. He completed his residency at The Brooklyn Hospital in 1947-1951.
During the Korean War he served honorably as a Captain in the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force. During this time, he and his wife, Catherine, were recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency to serve overseas as physicians on the island of Saipan.
In 1956, he moved to Garden City and practiced obstetrics/gynecology at Nassau Hospital, now Winthrop Hospital, in Mineola, N.Y. He was a member of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. As a Garden City resident Dr. Schnell was actively involved in Garden City baseball, the Garden City High School Men’s Association, the Garden City Retired Men’s Club, and the Cherry Valley Club. He was an avid supporter of Garden City High School sports and could be seen at almost every home and away baseball, basketball and football game. He enjoyed bridge, gardening, golf, tennis, reading, swimming at the beach, classic cars and boats, and attending the theatre. He was a long time Yankees and Jets fan.
He was the beloved husband of the late Catherine Lund Schnell and the late Marge Rix Schnell.
He was the father of Lisa (Schnell) Murphy, Richard Schnell and Nan (Schnell) Kiyonaga, as well as a grandfather of 14, and the great-grandfather of three.
Military burial will be at Calverton National Cemetery at a future date.
In lieu of flowers contributions may be made to Winthrop Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Winthrop Hospital Development Office, 200 Old Country Rd, Suite 570, Mineola, NY 11501.
We thank Dr. Schnell’s daughter for this heartfelt obituary.
Peter Standaart
Peter Standaart, private lessons teacher and visiting instrumental teacher, passed away on Sept. 16, at the age of 70. Standaart was educated at Duke University, the North Carolina School for the Arts, and Yale University. He arrived at Wesleyan in 1975 and continued to teach flute until shortly before his death. He performed many times with the Wesleyan Orchestra, the Goodspeed Opera, and the Connecticut Flute Orchestra, among others. In recent years, Standaart was a member of two trios and co-founded Flutes in the Woods, a Middletown performance series for regional flutists. Throughout his career, he premiered many new works, including compositions by his Wesleyan colleagues. He is remembered as a talented and passionate musician by his family and friends. His friend and colleague, Libby Van Cleve said,“It’s a huge personal loss for me, and a collective loss for the Wesleyan community and music world.”
Lewis “Lew” N. Lukens
Lewis “Lew” N. Lukens, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, emeritus, passed away on Sept. 8, at the age of 91. Lukens taught at Wesleyan from 1966 to 1999, where he was one of the founding members of the molecular biology and biochemistry department. He received his BA from Harvard University and his PhD. from the University of Pennsylvania. Luken’s research involved the regulation of gene expression by eukaryotic cells. He was the recipient of many research grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At Wesleyan, Lukens served as chair of the biology department, on the committee on graduate instruction, and as program director of the Biomedical Research Support Grant. In retirement, he served on the advisory board of the Wasch Center for Retired Faculty. Dr. Scott Holmes, his colleague, said, “Lew exhibited many qualities I will continue to seek to emulate, as a scientist and a person.” Lukens is survived by his wife, Ellen, and their four children, Katherine Lukens, Marie Lukens Hansen, Ellen Lukens Sisson, and Lewis N. Lukens Jr., and nine grandchildren.
Peter Kilby
Peter Kilby, professor of economics, emeritus, passed away on Aug. 2, at the age of 83. Kilby arrived at Wesleyan in 1965 after working with USAID in Nigeria for two years. He received his BA from Harvard University, his MA from Johns Hopkins University, and his D.Phil from the University of Oxford. Kilby’s work spanned continents. Throughout his career, Kilby was appointed a Fulbright Fellow, a Ford Foundation Foreign Area Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. He served as an advisor to the ILO World Employment Programme in Geneva, the Ciskei Commission in South Africa, the governments of Malaysia and Tanzania, the World Bank in Kenya and Nigeria, USAID, the U.S. State Department, and the Food and Agricultural Organization, among others. “Peter Kilby was a respected scholar and beloved teacher with a wide range of friends at Wesleyan not only among those of us in the social sciences, but throughout Wesleyan’s three divisions,” said colleague Professor Emeritus Mike Lovell. Kilby is survived by his wife, Marianne Kilby, his three children, Damian, Christopher, and Karen, and his six grandchildren.
James C. Kamm ’92
James C. Kamm ’92 passed away on June 20, 2018. At Wesleyan, Kamm majored in theater and was a member for Alpha Delta Phi. He earned an MFA in acting from DePaul University. Most recently, he worked as a desktop support specialist at Wesleyan for 10 years. “Jim was well liked and respected by the faculty and staff that he served, and was highly regarded by his ITS colleagues for his deep knowledge of all things Apple and his attention to detail when it came to writing and editing documentation for ITS services,” said Dave Baird, vice president and chief information officer at Wesleyan said. “He will be missed by one and all.”
Peter F. Wojnar ’81
Peter F. Wojnar ’81 passed away on June 8, 2018. He was 59. Wojner majored in government at Wesleyan and earned a doctoral grade from Harvard University. Wojnar was a longtime resident of Tarrytown.He is survived by his former wife, Laurie Jacobs ’81, his children Elizabeth ’12, Julia Ann, and Benjamin Wojnar, as well as his siblings, Mark and Andrea Wojnar-Diagne’86, and his nieces and nephews.
Kim C. Fabricius ’70
Kim C. Fabricius ’70 passed away on July 1, 2018 at the age of 69. The following is an heartfelt obituary by Fabricius’ friend, Ben Myers:
My friend Kim Fabricius has died. On the weekend I received an email from his family. He was at his local coffee shop when he died, suddenly and unexpectedly. I didn’t realise a person like that could die. I had assumed that a light as bright as Kim’s would never go out.
He used to sit at that coffee shop scribbling his prolific “doodlings” – jokes and aphorisms and insults – on the paper napkins, before sending them to me.
We became friends 12 years ago when Kim started writing with me on the Faith & Theology blog. I loved the guy. He was so funny, so sharp, so widely read, so cultured in an utterly irreverent and self-deprecating way, so over-the-top, so New York. He got his Christianity straight from Karl Barth and Dostoevsky and the Book of Job, which might explain why he didn’t have much patience for cultural Christianity or the platitudes of a feel-good therapeutic faith.
He had become a Christian while reading Karl Barth’s commentary on Romans: at the start of the book he was an unbeliever, and by the end of it he had decided to become a minister of the gospel. (Later, when he had a son, he named him Karl.)
Kim spent a long ministry in a little Reformed congregation in Swansea in the south of Wales. He was a pastor to those people, as you’ll know if you have read any of the innumerable sermons, hymns, and liturgies that he made available online. Not to mention his seemingly endless supply of down-to-earth wisdom about the ministry: “When I prepare couples for marriage and come to the vow ‘till death us do part’, I always tell them to cheer up – it could be longer.” Or this: “It may be easier to negotiate with a terrorist than with a church organist, but it is easier to negotiate with a church organist than with a cat.” Or this: “A minister is something of a jack-of-all-trades – without the skills.”
In some ways Kim was a pastor to me too. We wrote to each other hundreds (or was it thousands?) of times. When I suffered personal griefs and defeats, I would turn to him for counsel. He was a pastoral realist, he liked to face things squarely just as they are, and there was great understanding and great kindness in the way he could talk to you about the challenges of living with ordinary human brokenness. He was one of those people who makes you wonder if there might be a point to having Christian ministers around after all.
Kim was a person with few illusions and much love. “What’s the difference between optimism and hope?” he once asked, and answered: “Hope is for pessimists.”
He wrote once that “God invented the church to give atheists a fighting chance” – yet he devoted his life to serving the church. He railed against America – yet he was proud to be a New Yorker, and he was always contemplating the theological advantages of American sports. In a very characteristic remark, he wrote: “Karl Barth said that when he gets to heaven he will seek out Mozart before Calvin. Quite right – and presumably he spoke to Calvin only to compare errors. Me – I’ll be heading for the choir of angels, to find Sandy Koufax, to see how he made the baseball sing.” (But the pitcher has outlived the pastor. I hope Sandy Koufax will seek out Kim one day and bestow the longed-for benediction.)
Kim and I had formed a strong friendship over the internet before we ever met in person. We met one day in the United States – it was during one of his annual trips to New York to visit his mother – and I was stunned to realise that he was thirty years older than me. His heart and mind were so young, I had assumed that perhaps I was the elder brother. He was old enough to be my father, yet Kim Fabricius was one of the youngest people I have ever known. In his mind there was nothing stagnant or stale. He was still curious, still supple, still exploring the possibilities, still seeing life as an adventure of faith, hope, and love. At the age of 69 he died; and he was only getting started.
We thank Ben Myers for this heartfelt obituary.