NORMAN JOSEPH DANIELS

Norman Joseph Daniels, professor of athletics, emeritus, died May 11, 2009. He was 102 years old. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan, where he was a nine-letter athlete and earned All-American recognition in both basketball and football. He came to Wesleyan in 1934, after two years of teaching and coaching at Hillsdale High School in Michigan. Along with his baseball coaching duties, he also taught classes in aircraft engines and meteorology at the Wesleyan Naval Pre-Flight School throughout World War II. After the war, he was appointed head football coach and led the Cardinal Gridders for 18 years. In his first three seasons, 1946–48, the team had a perfect unbeaten record. During his 39 years at Wesleyan he spent time coaching nearly every sport, until his retirement in 1973. His baseball clubs compiled 247 victories, which included eight “Little Three” titles. His basketball record, 1945–47 was 18 and 8. In eight years as a wrestler mentor, his teams won three “Little Three” championships. Daniels was a member of the American Football Coaches Association, the NCAA Rules Committee, The American Baseball Coaches Association, and the New England Baseball Coaches Association. He was inducted into the College Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974, and in 1948 received the Gold Key Award, presented by the Connecticut Sport Writers’ Association. He was inducted into the Middletown Sports Hall of Fame as a charter member in 1994 and was inducted into the Wesleyan Sports Hall of Fame in 2008. Predeceased by his wife of 66 years, Okla (Climie) Daniels, he is survived by a daughter, a son, 10 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren.

STEPHEN CRITES

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

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

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

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

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

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.

JOSHUA KEMENY ’94

JOSHUA KEMENY, 36, died Feb. 23, 2009. After graduation from Wesleyan, he worked in advertising in New York and Chicago and won a number of awards in 2003 and 2005. He is survived by his wife, Madeleine Klein, his son, two half-siblings, his mother, and his grandparents.

Class of 1972 | 2014 | Issue 1

My thanks to all of you who sent me recent updates. Inclusion here is based solely on order of receipt. If you don’t see your news here, you will in the next issue!

Starting with a personal encounter of an unusual kind, Rob Gelblum and I spoke together on a panel on brownfields development at a recent conference in Baltimore. We had them rolling in the aisles. Rob, after many years with the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office, is now in private practice in Raleigh.

Steve Goldschmidt went to San Francisco for the National Association of Realtors national conference, and had dinner with his old roommate, Steve Lewis. “After dinner,” writes Steve G., “he drove me back to the hotel in his shiny Maserati but he asked that I emphasize to you that he bought it used.” Duly noted. Steve L. also claims still to own the truck he drove at Wes.

Art Vanderbilt wrote to recommend Katy Butler ’71’s book Knocking on Heaven’s Door. Katy gives a moving account of the last years of her parents. Those who knew Jeff Butler of the CSS will not want to miss this.

Bob White sends the sad news that George Jett lost his wife, Lynn MacFarlane ’75. The two of them met at a Reunion in 2005.

After 12 years as pastor of churches in suburban New Jersey, Rev. Doug Stivison has accepted a call as minister of the Congregational Church of South Dartmouth, Mass. “It is a classic white clapboard New England Congregational church combining long history with a vibrant, outreach-focused congregation. Its 200-year-old spire is a navigational landmark to sailors on Buzzard’s Bay —with the church just three blocks from the harborfront of Padanaram.”

Bruce Throne sends us this report: “I’m still in Santa Fe practicing law, one child (Greg) in his last year studying engineering at Trinity U in San Antonio and my daughter now in Australia, 13 months into her solo travel around the world, intending to beat her dad’s record from the late ’70s. I’m spending a lot of time helping renewable energy providers in the state with the second greatest solar potential in the country (yes, it’s sunny here in New Mexico) trying to deal with state regulators who seem to think climate change is a ‘greenie’ hoax on the public. Bet Wes-Techers living on islands or the coasts are thinking otherwise (glug, glug). About five years ago, I actually ran for election as commissioner at our Public Regulation Commission (regulates electric utilities and more) and finished second out of six candidates in the Democratic primary to a young man without a college degree who subsequently got indicted for violating the state’s campaign laws, misappropriating public funds and other minor infractions of the law and had to resign. So much for a Wesleyan education. Where was that course in ‘local politics’ at Wes? Sorry to report that Bruce Hearey was one of the folks that squandered $100 for ‘seed money’ for my otherwise publicly-funded campaign, even though he’s still in Cleveland and, so far as I know, his only interest in New Mexico is attending local pagan ceremonies (I’ll let him describe that, if he can). Actually visited Bruce and his lovely wife, Steph, in Cleveland two summers ago where he graciously took me to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (his thousandth visit apparently, he told me yawning) and provided trivia (still yawning) about events in the ’60s and ’70s that even that museum didn’t seem to know about (thus confirming why he became a lawyer—trivia ad nauseum). Also ran into Larry Weinberg hiking on the Aspen Vista trail above Santa Fe a few years back; heard he’s retired and moved here but haven’t seen or heard from him his since. Perhaps because I lost that election to a convicted felon? The only way we recognized each other on the trail (with all that grey or receding hair) were the Wes t-shirts we both were wearing that day for some odd reason. Hard to believe those old t-shirts still fit, or even have survived this long. Hope everyone else in our class is surviving that well. Cheers.”

And, for his part, Bruce Hearey writes: “My Victorian Fiction class at John Carroll U. is going well despite its difficulty; anyone else ever read Daniel Deronda? (I am two-thirds of the way through a masters in humanities degree program.) I will be the president of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association come June, 2014. Stephanie and I had a great get-together with Robbie Brewster in NYC in November. He looks great, is doing well, and we even managed to talk for a few minutes about something other than getting so damn old. Played golf with Brian Silvestro ’70, Jack Ingraham ’70, and Steve Ingraham ’70 in August in Rochester. Nothing but happy news from this correspondent on the North Coast.”

Just before fall semester began, Dave Gerard and his wife, Miho, returned to campus to meet Professor Phil Pomper, who had been Dave’s history tutor in CSS, and a key adviser for his senior honors thesis. Dave’s son, Pierre Gerard ’15, an Earth & Environmental Sciences major active in a variety of green causes, joined them for a meeting in Phil’s office where they had a vibrant discussion about the merits of moderate versus radical activism to effect social change. Afterwards, they headed down to Luce Restaurant for lunch, where the conversation turned to psychohistory as well as their shared passion for vigorous exercise, and in Phil’s case, long distance running into his 70s. Pierre later attended the dedication at Homecoming of the Philip Pomper Classroom on the fourth floor of PAC. Dave is an organizational psychologist and is a principal consultant with Korn Ferry in San Francisco. He is active in interviewing for Wesleyan in Silicon Valley, and attended a recent gathering of prospective students, parents and alumni with the new Assistant Dean of Admissions, Kora Shin, in Palo Alto.

Thank you all! Watch for the rest next time!

SETH A. DAVIS
17 Wolf Road, Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520 Sethdavis@post.harvard.edu