Faculty and Staff

Pastora San Juan Cafferty, professor emerita in the School of Social Service Administration, died April 16 in Chicago. She was 72. Cafferty, a scholar of race and ethnicity specializing in the Hispanic community, joined the faculty in 1971. A research associate and senior study director with NORC at UChicago, she also was a founding member of the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy. Active in civic life, Cafferty served on the founding board of directors of the Regional Transportation Authority and was a governmental adviser, serving on President Carter’s Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties and on the US Federal Advisory Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. When she retired from UChicago in 2005, a lecture series on race and ethnicity in American life was established in her name. Her second husband, Henry P. Russe, MD’57, died in 1991. Survivors include a brother.

Joseph J. Ceithaml, SB’37, PhD’41, of Chicago, dean of students emeritus of the Pritzker School of Medicine and the Biological Sciences Division, died May 11. He was 96. In 1950, shortly after joining the BSD faculty, Ceithaml, a biochemist, won the University’s Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. The following year he became dean, a role he held for 35 years. During that time, he worked to develop financial aid systems, growing the medical school loan fund program from $25,000 to $6 million. In 1999 a group of alumni created the Joseph J. Ceithaml Scholarship Fund in his honor. The recipient of the 1973 Distinguished Service Award and the 1982 Gold Key Award from the Medical and Biological Sciences Alumni Association, Ceithaml also received a 1996 Alumni Service Award from the UChicago Alumni Association. He is survived by his wife, Mildred; a daughter; a son; a stepson; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Andrew M. Greeley, AM’61, PhD’62, a research associate at the Center for the Study of Politics and Society at NORC, died in Chicago on May 29. He was 85. Ordained as a priest in 1954, Greeley became an assistant pastor at Christ the King parish in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood. While continuing to work as a pastor, Greeley began doctoral studies at the University, graduating in 1962 and becoming NORC’s senior study director the same year. Unassigned to a parish after 1963, Greeley studied the details of religious experience, especially the Catholic experience in the United States. He also taught sociology courses at the U of C and the University of Arizona. Greeley wrote more than 100 nonfiction books, including The American Catholic (Basic Books, 1977) and The Catholic Myth (Scribner, 1990). He also published 50 novels, including The Cardinal Sins (Warner Books, 1981), which was translated into a dozen other languages. His fiction was known for its steamy content, often depicting married couples rediscovering passion after estrangement. For 40 years Greeley wrote a syndicated column that appeared in dozens of newspapers. Greeley is survived by his sister, Mary (Greeley) Durkin, AM’72, DMN’74.

Farouk Mustafa, the Ibn Rushd professorial lecturer in modern Arabic language and associate director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, died in Chicago on April 3. He was 70. Born in Tanta, Egypt, Mustafa studied and taught English literature at the University of Cairo before moving to the United States in 1968, when he enrolled in a comparative literature doctoral program at the University of Minnesota. A scholar of Arabic literature, Mustafa joined the University faculty in 1975. Under his pen name, Farouk Abdel Wahab, Mustafa translated into English many novels by Egyptian writers. His final translation, Hala El Badry’s Rain over Baghdad, will be published later this year. In addition, he translated into Arabic Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Luigi Pirandello’s Henry IV. In 2007 Mustafa was awarded the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. He is survived by his wife, UChicago Arabic lecturer Kay Heikkinen; two stepdaughters; a stepson, Alaa Attia El-Bendary, AB’85; a brother; and a sister.

1930s

Alberta Annon Carten, X’37, died April 18 in Alexandria, VA. She was 97. After moving to Alexandria with her family in 1943, Carten was active in the community, serving as a special correspondent (under the pen name Ann Robinson) for the Alexandria Gazette in the 1960s and ’70s, covering social activities. Survivors include two daughters, a son, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Paul L. Kiser, AB’38, of Glen Ellyn, IL, died April 15. He was 98. Kiser taught at his alma mater, Morton High School in Cicero, IL, for more than three decades, retiring in 1977. Survivors include his wife, Faye; a son; a brother; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Eleanor Stein Rusnak, U-High’32, AM’38, of Highland Park, IL, died March 28. She was 97. Rusnak volunteered at Highland Park Hospital for more than 20 years and served as president of the Mount Sinai Hospital Women’s Board. Her husband, Raymond L. Rusnak, JD’36, died in 1992. She is survived by a daughter, Lucile R. Krasnow, AM’71; two sons; six grandchildren, including Katharine Rusnak, U-High’93, and Claire Rusnak, U-High’96; and seven great-grandchildren.

Joseph Rosenstein, AB’39, AM’41, PhD’50, of Dallas, died May 3. He was 93. An Army veteran, Rosenstein was an executive at Pollock Paper Company (later St. Regis and Champion) before becoming a tenured management professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, retiring as professor emeritus in 1992. A founding member of the University of Chicago Dallas alumni club and a member of the Alumni Schools Committee, Rosenstein received a 1989 Alumni Service Award from the UChicago Alumni Association. Survivors include a daughter, four grandchildren, and four great-granddaughters.

1940s

Emily Shield Barrett, SB’41, of Hartford, CT, died January 3. She was 93. Raising her family in Scarsdale, NY, Barrett later became a New York City elementary school teacher, retiring in 1986. She is survived by four daughters, a son, 14 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Ruth (Clayman) Meyer, AB’41, AM’44, died May 6, 2011, in Chicago. She was 90. A civic leader in Chicago, Meyer was named North Sider of the Year in 1955 for her work on the constitutional amendment for Illinois legislative reapportionment; she also served as president of the Chicago League of Women Voters. In the 1960s Meyer managed the American Fund for Psychiatry and served as executive director of the National Association of Social Workers. She then joined the University of Illinois’s Jane Addams College of Social Work as director of admissions, later becoming a professor. Meyer retired in 1990. Survivors include four sons, two stepdaughters, a brother, and 17 grandchildren.

David Graham Wylie, X’41, died January 20 in Racine, WI. He was 94. An Army veteran, Wylie was a commercial artist, writer, and photographer who designed Kellogg’s Special K box, the Easter Seals bunnies, and an award-winning ad for Blatz Beer. With his second wife, Joanne, Wylie wrote and illustrated several children’s books. His first wife, June (Cover) Wylie, U-High’35, SB’40, died in 2003. Survivors include his son.

Joseph A. Parks, MD’43, died February  6 in Santa Rosa, CA. He was 94. A WW II Army veteran, Parks practiced radiology at hospitals across the country, retiring in 1988. He also volunteered as a member of Project Hope, caring for needy patients and teaching medical professionals in Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Colombia, and Nicaragua. He is survived by six daughters, two sons, 15 grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren.

Barbara Kawin (Deutsch) Eckhouse, U-High’40, X’44, died April 30 in Lake Forest, IL. She was 89. Active in local politics, Eckhouse served on the Glencoe (IL) Human Relations Committee and was a Democratic precinct captain. Survivors include four daughters, a son, and ten grandchildren.

Margaret Kiess Krogdahl, PhD’44, died April 10 in Lexington, KY. She was 92. Krogdahl was a student of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and held a three-year astronomy fellowship at Yerkes Observatory, during which she published several articles in the Astrophysical Journal. She married a fellow student at Yerkes, Wasley S. Krogdahl, SB’39, PhD’42. Moving with her family to Lexington in 1960, Krogdahl helped proofread Wasley’s writings in astronomy. Her husband died in 2009. Survivors include a daughter, a son, a brother, and a grandchild.

Leon A. Carrow, SB’45, MD’47, died April 10 in Evanston, IL. He was 89. An Air Force veteran, in 1953 Carrow joined the obstetrics and gynecology faculty at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he taught and practiced until his 1991 retirement. He was a life board member of Northwestern Memorial Corporation and served as a consultant to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago for more than three decades. Survivors include his wife, Joan; a daughter; two stepdaughters; five grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

Edna (Sherbin) Hirsohn, AB’45, AM’48, died September 9, 2012, in Walnut Creek, CA. She was 87. In 1948, she married Sidney Hirsohn, AM’46 (who died in 2005), and they raised three sons in Foxboro, MA. She had a private psychology practice until her 1991 retirement. Survivors include her sons and four grandchildren.

Gloria (Lantz) Gerecht, PhB’46, died February 11 in Silver Spring, MD. She was 87. After working as an elementary school teacher, Gerecht served for almost 30 years as the vice president of CD Publications, a Silver Spring newsletter firm founded by her husband, Asher Gerecht, AM’50. The chair of several environmental committees of the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County, in 1973 she received an award from the Maryland Environmental Trust. Gerecht also cofounded the Gerecht Family Institute for Outreach at Hebrew Union College and the National Center to Encourage Judaism. She is survived by her husband, a daughter, two sons, a brother, and six grandchildren.

Sophia Jean “Cissie” (Liebshutz) Peltz, AB’46, of Milwaukee, died April 3. She was 85. A pioneering female cartoonist, Peltz published her social satires for four decades in publications including the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal, and this magazine. In 1989 Peltz opened an art gallery in Milwaukee, holding annual shows dedicated to the work of women artists. A month before her death, Peltz was honored by Southern Graphics Council International for being a champion of printmaking. Her husband, Richard W. Peltz, AB’46, AM’49, PhD’53, died in 1975. Survivors include a son and three grandchildren.

Arthur S. Golab, PhB’47, of Chicago, died March 26. He was 88. A WW II Army veteran, Golab was a truck dispatcher before retiring at age 57. Living in Oak Park, IL, Golab was active in history discussion groups. Survivors include three daughters, two sons, and three grandchildren.

Gene Conrad Robinson, PhB’47, SM’49, of Baton Rogue, LA, died April 24. He was 84. A chemist, Robinson spent 43 years working in research and development for Ethyl Corporation. He retired in 1997 having developed more than 30 patents. In retirement, he served as a consultant to companies in the chemical industry. Survivors include his wife, Elaine; a daughter; a son; a brother, Theodore R. Robinson, AB’55; and four grandsons.

Donald G. Thompson, PhB’47, AM’50, of Skokie, IL, died February 26. He was 85. A member of the US Olympic fencing team during the 1948 London Olympics and a 1953 US épée champion, Thompson was a professor in and former chair of the English department at Wilbur Wright College. Survivors include his wife, Marguerite; three sons; and four grandchildren.

John J. Dolan, PhB’48, of Waukesha, WI, died April 13. He was 83. Dolan’s career took him to Allen-Bradley, General Electric, and Dresser Industries. In the 1960s he was also involved in the music publishing and recording industry. Survivors include three daughters, a son, a brother, nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Mildred (Diamond) Mailick, AM’48, died April 3 in New York. She was 85. A social work professor at the Hunter College Silberman School of Social Work for 23 years, Mailick also taught social work at Mount Sinai Hospital and the New York Academy of Medicine. She was also the associate editor of Social Work in Health Care for a decade. Her husband, Sidney Mailick, AM’48, PhD’55, died in 2003. Survivors include a daughter; a son, Daniel Mailick, AB’75; and four grandchildren.

Nicholas Melas, PhB’46, SB’48, MBA’50, longtime president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) of Greater Chicago, died March 15 in Chicago. He was 89. An Army veteran, Melas was elected as a water district commissioner to the MWRD (then called the Metropolitan Sanitary District) in 1962. MWRD’s president for 18 years, Melas oversaw the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (known as the Deep Tunnel), and near the end of his tenure Chicago’s Centennial Fountain was named for him. Leaving the water district in 1992, in 1998 Melas served on the Illinois Pollution Control Board for ten years. In 2006 he received a Public Service Award from the UChicago Alumni Association. Survivors include his wife, Irene; two daughters; three grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

Ralph J. Wood Jr., AB’48, a financial adviser, died March 17 in Urbana, IL. He was 89. A WW II Navy veteran, Wood joined Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada in 1950, leaving nine years later to create his own company, Gerwood Inc. The former president—and the only white member—of the South Side Life Underwriters Association, Wood helped the group integrate the Chicago Association of Life Underwriters. He was also appointed by President Reagan to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation Advisory Committee, serving for more than nine years. Survivors include his wife, Trudi; three daughters; two sons, including R. Jennings Wood III, PhD’87; a brother, Stephen B. Wood, PhB’48, AM’54, PhD’64; a sister; and six grandchildren, including Thomas J. Wood, ’16.

1950s

Martin Balaban, AB’50, PhD’59, died October 14 in Okemos, MI. He was 82. A Korean War veteran, Balaban joined the zoology faculty of Michigan State University in 1964, where he taught for 35 years. One of his early studies on the motility cycles of chick embryos is widely cited in zoology textbooks. Survivors include his wife, Corinne; a daughter; two sons, including Carey Balaban, PhD’79; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Stanley William Hier, MBA’51, of New York, died January 21. He was 93. After serving as corporate vice president at Wilson Labs in Chicago, Hier moved to New York City as co-owner of VGF Corp. He retired in 1975. Survivors include a daughter, two sons, and four grandchildren.

Sybil Marie Jones Dedmond, JD’50, of Pensacola, FL, died March 24. She was 91. In 1951 Dedmond became the first black woman to earn tenure in an American law school (North Carolina Central University), teaching criminal and real estate property law. Active in the black law community, she joined pre-oral arguments for landmark civil rights cases including Brown v. Board of Education. In 1964 Dedmond moved to Pensacola, where she worked in a private practice with her husband and served as a county government administrator. Later, Dedmond became a professor at Pensacola Junior College, where she taught until her 1994 retirement. Survivors include a son.

Peter Small, PhB’48, SB’50, of Coconut Creek, FL, and Williston, VT, died April 2. He was 86. A WW II veteran, Small managed his own mail order business for 40 years. He organized many Friends of Music chamber music concerts in northern Westchester (NY) and played in a string quartet. Survivors include his wife, Beatrice; a daughter; a son; two sisters; and two grandsons.

W. Gale High, MBA’52, died October 1 in Delphos, OH. He was 90. A WW II veteran, High joined the First National Bank of Chicago in 1952 as an audit clerk, rising to vice president and chief comptroller before his 1977 retirement. Survivors include a daughter; two sons; ten grandchildren, including Michelle High, AB’11, Melissa High, ’14, and Megan High, ’17; and one great-grandchild.

J. Kirk Dickens, SM’56, died April 29 in Goshen, IN. He was 81. Dickens spent his career as a physicist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, retiring in 1995. He also researched nine generations of his family and published a related book in 1986. He is survived by his wife, Marcay; four sons; a sister; and two grandsons.

1960s

H. Gene Blocker, AB’60, of Cleveland Heights, OH, died April 12. He was 75. A philosophy professor, Blocker joined the faculty of Ohio University in Athens in 1972, serving as department chair in the 1980s. His many articles and books include The Metaphysics of Absurdity (University Press of America, 1979) and Fundamentals of Philosophy (Pearson), now in its eighth edition. He retired from Ohio as professor emeritus in 1998. The founder of the Athens Dixieland Jazz Band, Blocker played the cornet. He is survived by his wife, Jennifer Jeffers; a son; two daughters; a brother; a sister; and a grandchild.

Brian Hindley, AB’61, PhD’67, of London, a leading expert on the economics of commercial policy, died May 11, 2012. He was 76. Hindley spent the majority of his career at the London School of Economics (LSE), joining the school in 1967, becoming a senior lecturer in 1981 and a reader in 1995. He was also a counselor for studies at the Trade Policy Research Centre in London and worked on trade policy for organizations including the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the Centre for Policy Studies. In 1989 Hindley became a founding member of the Bruges Group, which created a forum for British citizens concerned about the costs of the United Kingdom entering the European Union. Hindley retired from LSE in 2000. His first marriage, to Judith (Phelps) Hindley, AB’64, ended in divorce. Survivors include a daughter and a son from his first marriage; his wife, Anne Green; two daughters from his second marriage; and a granddaughter.

Aristide R. Zolberg, PhD’61, a political scientist, died April 12 in New York. He was 81. After fleeing the Nazis in Belgium, Zolberg served in the US Army before earning his PhD. He taught at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Chicago and then joined the New School in 1983 as a distinguished professor of political science. The founding director of the school’s International Center for Migration, Ethnicity, and Citizenship, he served on the International Migration Review editorial board for two decades, held visiting professorships at several French institutions, and received the Ordre des Palmes Académiques from the French government for his contributions to French higher education. The author of several publications, including A Nation By Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (Harvard University Press, 2006), he received the 2008 Distinguished Scholar Award from the International Studies Association’s ethnicity, nationalism, and migration studies section. Zolberg is survived by his wife, Vera Lenchener Zolberg, PhD’74; a daughter, Erica W. Zolberg, U-High’78; a son; and three grandchildren.

Barbara Gaul Steward, AM’63, died November 4  in Dover, DE. She was 73. An assistant professor of English at Delaware State University for many years, Steward and her husband, Dwight Steward, AM’61, wrote several mystery novels. The Acupuncture Murders (Harper & Row, 1973) was nominated for an Edgar Award as best new novel. Predeceased by her husband, she is survived by a brother and a stepbrother.

Richard Gordon, AB’67, died of pancreatic cancer October 6 in Berkeley, CA. He was 67. A photographer, Gordon published several books under his own publishing company, Chimaera Press, including American Surveillance: Someone to Watch Over Me (2009). His work appears in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, and the Corcoran Gallery of American Art. Gordon is survived by his wife, Meredith Miller; a son; and a sister, Rose Ann (Gordon) Cope, AB’63.

Robert E. Evenson, PhD’68, of New Haven, CT, a development economist, died February 2. He was 78. Joining Yale’s economics department in 1977, Evenson served as director of the university’s Economic Growth Center and of the international development economics program. Working with agricultural economist Vittorio Santaniello, in 1998 Evenson organized a conference in Rome on the economics of biotechnology and biodiversity, which led to the creation of the International Consortium of Agricultural Biotechnology Research. He retired from Yale in 2007. Survivors include his wife, Judy; three daughters; a son; two brothers;  two sisters; and seven grandchildren.

Shirley R. (Green) Simeon, AM’69, of Chicago, died February 21. She was 89. A writer, educator, and psychology consultant, Simeon had a varied career that included jobs at the Chicago Public Schools, the Chicago Committee of Urban Opportunity, the Illinois Department of Corrections, and Harold Washington College. She is survived by a son, a sister, four grandchildren, and one great-grandson.

1970s

Joseph Patrick McBride, MBA’71, a land development engineer, died April 1 in Crystal Lake, IL. He was 82. In 1968 McBride founded McBride Engineering. Survivors include four daughters, four sons, a brother, 23 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Ian D. H. Cuthill, MBA’77, of Manlius, NY, died April 21. He was 83. After working in research and development for food companies, including Borden Inc. in Syracuse, NY, Cuthill founded a consulting firm and was the US editor for trade magazine International Food Marketing & Technology. In 2001 he started teaching at several central New York universities, retiring at age 80. Survivors include his wife, Jean; two daughters; two sons; and nine grandchildren.

1980s

Deborah G. Heilizer, AB’80, died of pancreatic cancer April 7 in Washington, DC. She was 54. After serving as deputy assistant director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division, Heilizer became director and senior counsel at the investment bank Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown. In 2005 she joined Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan’s securities litigation group as a partner. She is survived by her husband, Keith Weissman, AB’76, AM’78, PhD’90; a daughter; two sons; her parents; four brothers; and three sisters.

Teresa Marie Seipel, MBA’82, died April 27 in Palatine, IL. She was 58. Seipel’s most recent position was as a market manager for GATX Corporation. She served on the board of the University of Chicago Women in Business Group, organizing the Women’s Summit in 2005. Survivors include her husband, Robert Ehrhardt; her parents; two brothers; and five sisters.

2000s

John D. Hunter, PhD’01, died August 28 of cancer in Chicago. He was 44. A neurobiologist and computer programmer, Hunter created Matplotlib, a scientific-graphing program that employs the Python open-source computer language. His innovation was used during the 2004 Rover landing on Mars. A founding board member of the nonprofit NumFOCUS Foundation, Hunter spent the past six years working for the investment firm Tradelink. He is survived by his wife, Miriam; three daughters; his mother; his stepfather; his grandmother; and several sisters and stepsisters.

2010s

Catherine C. Ye, AB’11, died April 22 after an accident in Chicago’s West Loop. She was 24. An economics major, Ye was a consultant at the IRI Group and had recently received a job offer to work for Amazon. Survivors include her parents and a sister.

Austin Hudson-LaPore, ’14, of Albuquerque, NM, died in June in Chicago. The rising fourth-year accidentally drowned in Lake Michigan. A biochemistry major, Hudson-LaPore belonged to the Outdoor Adventure Club, was an avid hiker, enjoyed classical music, and had planned to spend the summer working in a University science lab. Survivors include his parents and a sister.

Updated 09.20.2013