OBITUARIES

1923

Philip J. Nathan, retired attorney, New York, on October 23, 2000. Nathan, who earned a bachelor's degree from the Business School and his law degree from Brooklyn Law School, spent many years at the firm of Marx & Kahn and in private practice in New York.

1924

Douglass R. Judd, retired engineer, San Jose, Calif., on June 8, 2000. Judd, who earned a master's from the Engineering School in 1926, had worked as a civilian and mechanical engineer and as a consultant in California.

1930

George K. Mar, retired UNICEF official, Tsawwassen, British Columbia, on November 13, 1999. The son of a Chinese Presbyterian minister working with Chinese immigrants in Cumberland, British Columbia, Mar worked his way through the College and then earned a bachelor's degree and doctorate from the School of Pharmacy. He was the first non-white recipient of the gold medal for scholastic achievement awarded by the Gamma Chapter of the Kappa Psi fraternity, the world's oldest and largest pharmaceutical fraternity. At a time when Chinese Canadians were not allowed to vote or become pharmacists in British Columbia or Saskatchewan, Mar ventured to the fledgling Chinese Republic, where he joined the Public Health Ministry and worked at the Nanking Central Hospital. Mar remained in China after the Japanese invaded in 1937, becoming director of the Chemistry and Pharmacy Department in the capital, Chungqing (Chungking). At the same time, he served as a professor in herbal medicine at the National School of Pharmacy at Koh Lo Shun, where he conducted research on the medicinal properties of natural products. In 1944, he returned to the United States by way of India, settling in Washington, D.C., where he trained at the FDA as part of America's program to aid China. (He later became a scientist emeritus at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Md.) At war's end, Mar worked in both Nanking and Shanghai as founder and director of the Chinese Ministry of Health's National Medical Supplies Bureau. At the same time, he worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in Chungking. In 1950, Mar joined UNICEF (the successor to UNRRA) in Bangkok, and in 1955 he was transferred to UNICEF headquarters in New York. A regular participant in UNICEF programs in Asia and Africa (he once had to escape war-torn Biafra on a Red Cross flight), Mar is credited with helping establish sound practices among UNICEF relief operations. In 1977, he retired from the United Nations as medical specifications officer and consultant and moved to Tsawwassen.

1931

Lawrence J. Greene, retired attorney, New York, on July 6, 2000. Greene, who earned his law degree from Columbia and an LL.M. from George Washington, was an attorney in private practice in Manhattan.

Henry G. Walter, Jr., retired flavor company president and lawyer, New York, on November 11, 2000. Walter was the last surviving member of the 1929 Columbia crew team, which is widely considered one of the finest collegiate crews ever. The squad went undefeated during the regular season and won the Poughkeepsie Regatta on the Hudson River (forerunner of the IRA Regatta). A 1934 graduate of the Law School, Walter began his legal career with Cravath, Swain & Moore in Manhattan and then served as general counsel for the Heyden Chemical Corporation, a military contractor. In 1945, he formed Fulton, Walter & Halley with Hugh Fulton. Walter was named counsel at International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF) in 1962, and president shortly thereafter; he was appointed chief executive officer and chairman in 1970. During his tenure, annual sales at the company, which manufactured scents for perfumes and soaps as well as flavors for prepared foods and snacks, rose from $41 million to more than $500 million. He retired in 1985 but continued to work as an international business consultant. A noted philanthropist, Walter was a trustee at the University of Pennsylvania's Monell Chemical Senses Center, the U.S.-Japan Foundation and the Neuroscience Institute in New York as well as a director of the Ambrose Monell Foundation, the Van Ameringen Foundation, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Pierpont Morgan Library. He received an honorary LL.H. from Mount Sinai Medical College in 1991. A prolific writer, Walter authored The Oarsmen of 1929 - A 50-Year Retrospect (1979), Random Leaves from A Traveler's Notebook (1988), which he said was written to "chronicle my two decades of travel in search of learning while at the helm of IFF," and More Random Leaves from a Traveler's Notebook (1995) at the age of 85. Although Walter's rowing career stopped after the 1932 U.S. Olympic Trials, he remained active in Columbia athletics. He was a member of the Columbia Crew Alumni Advisory Committee and was awarded Columbia's Alumni Athletic Award in 1997.

1932

Arthur E. Goldschmidt, economist and retired ambassador, Haverford, Pa., on September 21, 2000. Goldschmidt, who was born in San Antonio, Texas, worked with the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and the Senate's Interstate Commerce Committee in the 1930s. He joined the Department of the Interior in 1940, becoming chief of its power division. In 1950 he joined the United Nations, where he eventually became the U.S. representative at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, with the rank of ambassador. After leaving government service, Goldschmidt worked as a consultant in New York before retiring to Haverford.

David H. Pollard, Jr., retired teacher, Greenwich, Conn., on June 11, 2000. Pollard taught in the Greenwich Public Schools for many years.

Donald D. Ross, retired journalist, Fairfax, Va., on February 19, 2000. Ross, who was born to American parents living in Havana, spent most of his childhood in New York City, living with relatives and attending private secondary schools. At the College, he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and managing editor of Spectator during the years when Reed Harris '32 was editor-in-chief. After graduate work at Columbia in American history, Ross embarked on a newspaper career and worked as a reporter for the Stamford Advocate in Connecticut and then the New York paper, PM. In 1945 he joined the staff of the New York Herald Tribune, which he served for the next 21 years as a general assignment reporter and feature writer specializing in entertainment personalities. After the demise of the Herald Tribune in 1966, Ross worked for a year for its short-lived successor, the World Journal Tribune. Following a brief stint as a writing instructor for Famous Schools in Westport, Conn., he rejoined the Stamford Advocate, serving as an editorial and feature writer until his retirement in 1985. Survivors include a son, Alex '66.

1934

Alfred Scalpone, retired radio and television executive, Rancho Sante Fe, Calif., on April 21, 2000. A New York native, Scalpone began his advertising career as an office boy at Young and Rubicam in the city. He worked up the ranks, becoming a vice president in charge of advertising for the radio programs The Burns and Allen Show and The Fred Astaire Packard Hour. During World War II, he helped create the Armed Forces Radio Service. Scalpone later became vice president for radio and television programming at McCann Erickson, as well as a vice president at CBS Television and W.R. Grace & Co. The Oxford Dictionary of Famous Quotations credits Scalpone with the phrases "The family that prays together, stays together" and "A world at prayer is a world at peace," both of which he penned for the Roman Catholic priest Patrick Peyton, who broadcast the long-running Family Theater program on the Mutual Broadcasting Company radio network.

1936

Daniel W. Bowman, retired, Huntington, N.Y., in 1997.

Walter Jack Brown, retired radiologist, Sun City, Ariz., on September 22, 2000. Brown, who received his medical degree from P&S, had a private medical practice specializing in radiology in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., for many years. Beginning in the 1970s, he practiced radiology at Boswell Memorial Hospital in Sun City.

Sigmund Sameth, retired broker, Berkeley Heights, N.J., on September 2, 2000. A native of Manhattan, Sameth was a self-employed real estate broker in Hackettstown and Irvington, N.J., for more than 25 years. He retired in 1976 and moved to Berkeley Heights in 1996.

1937

Philip R. Merriss, retired mining engineer, Brockton, Mass., on March 4, 1999. Merriss, who did graduate work at the Engineering School, worked at a series of mining companies, including Colquiri Mines, Mining Equipment Corp & Nickel Processing Corp., Industria e Comerico de Minerios, Alcoa Exploration, Bestwall Gypsum International, and Continental Copper and Steel Industries.

1938

Donald Wilmot White, Jr., retired engineer, Yarmouthport, Mass., on August 9, 2000. A native of Syracuse, N.Y., White was raised in Rome, N.Y., and earned a degree from the Engineering School in 1940. After graduation, he worked at Crucible Steele Co., Sylvania Electric Products, and General Electric's Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory. In 1958, White was appointed as consultant to the Centre d'Etude de l'Energie Nucleaire in Belgium. He returned to the United States in 1961, working at General Electric's Research and Development Center in Schenectady, N.Y., until his retirement in 1982. White, who was active in civic affairs and choral groups throughout his life, moved from Smith Mountain Lake, Va., to Yarmouthport in 1986.

1939

Carlos A. Bejarano, retired exporter, Woodstock, Vt., on July 15, 2000. A Brooklyn native, Bejarano attended Malvern High School in Lynbrook, N.Y., and entered the College at 16. After graduation, he earned a master's in civil and electrical engineering from the Engineering School. Bejarano served with the Army in Italy during World War II and later worked on the design of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and other projects for the Army Corps of Engineers. He went to work for Westinghouse International in New York, later moving to Bogota, Colombia, to become a partner and later president of Motores S.A. Co., a firm that imported industrial equipment. He returned to the United States, where he became manager of international operations at Burns and Roe, Inc. in New Jersey, president of Daviston Inc. in Litchfield, Conn., and president of Davy International of the USA in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

1940

William J. Heuser, retired government official, Rockville, Md., on March 31, 2000. The son of Frederich Heuser, professor of German and former director of Deutsches Haus, Heuser entered with the Class of 1939 but delayed his graduation so he could spend a year in Europe. He later earned a master's in history from Columbia and completed graduate courses at the Russian Institute. During World War II, Heuser served with the U.S. Army Air Force in China, Burma and India. In 1947, he joined the Army Security Agency, which was the predecessor of the National Security Agency (NSA), in Washington. He worked for the NSA for 25 years until retiring as a research analyst in 1971. Heuser then worked for a time as a tax consultant and financial advisor. A long-time resident of Silver Springs, Md., Heuser had recently moved to Rockville.

1941

Alan Goldberg, physician, Delray Beach, Fla., May 20, 2000. A native of the Bronx, Goldberg, who was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, received his medical degree from NYU in 1945. He maintained a family practice in the Bronx for 39 years; he had also served as president of the New York Academy of Family Practitioners and the Bronx County Academy. He became an accomplished jazz pianist during his retirement in Florida, and regularly entertained members of his class at reunions.

Jerry J. Zarriello, retired physician, Sacramento, Calif., on April 25, 2000. Zarriello, who received his medical degree from the Long Island College of Medicine (now SUNY) in 1944, served in the U.S. Navy for 30 years, advancing through grades to captain. During his naval career, he served in the School of Aviation Medicine at the Navy's base in Pensacola, Fla., as senior medical officer on the U.S.S. Midway, and as a staff medical officer for the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing in Vietnam, among other posts. After retiring from the Navy, Zarriello earned a master's in public administration from California State University in Sacramento and served 12 years as the public health officer for Nevada County, Calif. He retired in 1993.

1942

George R. Beliveau, retired FBI agent, Demarest, N.J., on August 18, 2000. During World War II, Beliveau served with the Army in China, Burma and India, and was discharged as a captain in 1946. He earned a degree from the Business School in 1947 and then entered the F.B.I. Academy in Virginia. Beliveau served as a special agent for the FBI for more than 30 years; the disappearance of ex-Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa was among his many cases. Although he only rowed crew for one year at the College, Beliveau maintained an interest in the Columbia crew team throughout his life. Beliveau had retired in Demarest, where he lived most of his life, during the 1980s.

Albert Hayden Dwyer, retired television industry attorney, Demarest, N.J., on August 8, 2000. During World War II, Dwyer served in the Army as a Japanese linguist and cryptanalyst and was a member of the team that cracked Japanese military and diplomatic codes. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1948 and served as an attorney for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In 1952, he joined CBS, becoming general attorney in charge of the broadcast section of the law department. In 1971, he joined the Children's Television Workshop (now called the Sesame Workshop) as general counsel and vice president for business affairs. In this capacity, he played a major role in establishing the organization's commercial products division and expanding its television activities. After leaving the Children's Television Workshop in 1981, Dwyer practiced law in Bergen County, N.J., where he also served as an adjunct professor of law at William Patterson College. Dwyer was an active member of the Army Reserve, from which he retired in 1981 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was a member of the American, New York, New Jersey, Bergen County and Federal Communications bar associations. Dwyer served on the board of education of his hometown of Tenafly, N.J., for 36 years. He retired to Demarest five years ago. Thomas Farkas, retired engineer and entrepreneur, Hartford, Conn., on October 1, 2000. A native of Budapest, Farkas immigrated with his family to the United States in 1924 and grew up in Brooklyn and Manhattan. A gifted student at Stuyvesant High School, Farkas won several city-wide mathematics competitions and a Pulitzer Scholarship to the College. After graduation he worked at Bell Laboratories, during which time he also earned a master's in mechanical engineering at the Engineering School. He then joined the Hamilton Standard Division of United Technologies, where he became chief design engineer. Farkas was among the first to recognize the possibilities of electronic (rather than mechanical) controls for aircraft, and in 1957 he left Hamilton Standard to start Dynamic Controls Corporation, an engineering and manufacturing firm that produced control mechanisms used in aircraft and aerospace applications, including the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. Originally in Bloomfield, Conn., DCC moved first to East Hartford and then to South Windsor, Conn., where it employed over 500 workers at its peak. When Farkas retired in 1997, DCC was acquired by Hamilton Standard. A devoted alumnus, Farkas was a regular at College events: he and his wife, Florence, never missed a Homecoming, and both attended his 55th reunion in 1997. He also had been a member of the Dean's Circle of the John Jay Associates Program. Farkas, who had moved to Boca Raton upon retirement, was hospitalized in Hartford at the time of his death.

1944

John M. Eastman, retired marketing consultant, Port Chester, N.Y., on September 21, 2000.

1945

John J. O'Conner, retired professor, Bethlehem, Pa., on May 29, 2000. O'Connor, who held a doctorate from Columbia, had been professor of computer science at Lehigh University's Center for Information Science.

Donald B. Salamack, retired FBI agent and private detective, Massapequa, N.Y., on April 26, 2000. A member of Phi Delta Phi, Salamack earned an LL.B. from St. John's University in 1949 and worked as a special agent for the FBI in the early 1950s. He later worked as a manager in the security division of the Long Island Lighting Company in Mineola, N.Y., and as a private investigator.

1949

Emanuel Chill, retired professor, West Hartford, Conn., on November 13, 2000. Chill, who served in the Army during World War II, was selected by the College to become a Kellett Fellow at Oxford. He taught at Columbia in the early 1950s, earned a master's at Oxford and a doctorate from Columbia, and joined the faculty of the City College of New York in 1962. A specialist in early modern French history, Chill wrote his dissertation on 17th-century France, was the editor and translator of Power, Property and History: Joseph Barnave's Introduction to the French Revolution and Other Writings (1971), and was the author of many scholarly articles. At his retirement from City College, Chill was named professor emeritus of history.

1950

Warren Lapworth, guidance counselor, Wareham, Mass., in 1991. Lapworth had been a guidance counselor at Milton High School in Milton, Mass.

1951

Lester Baker, diabetes researcher, professor and physician, Philadelphia, on September 17, 2000. A Staten Island native, Baker majored in history at the College and after graduation earned a certificate (equivalent to a master's) from the University of Paris School of Law and Higher Studies. He served in the Army from 1952-54, earned his medical degree at P&S in 1959, and completed a residency and fellowship in pediatrics at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the staff of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in 1965, serving as chairman of the Division of Endocrinology from 1978-95. He was the founding director of the hospital's Diabetes Center for Children and the first director of its General Clinical Research Center. He joined the University of Pennsylvania as an assistant professor of pediatrics in 1966, became associate professor in 1970, and full professor in 1976. From 1993 until his death, he served as director of the university's Diabetes Research Center. Baker had a lifelong interest in the care of children with diabetes mellitus and hypoglycemia of infancy; he identified the enzymatic defect that is a cause of infant hypoglycemia, a disorder now sometimes referred to as "Baker's Disease." He also was known for research into psychological issues affecting juvenile diabetes and for incorporating family therapy into the treatment of the disease. Baker was the principal investigator of the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT), a 10-year study conducted in the 1980s and 1990s that showed that rigorous control of blood sugar levels can dramatically reduce the disease's complications. Baker was a member of the advisory board of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, which honored him with the Mary Jane Kugel Award in 1988. He received the F.W.D. Lukens Award for Excellence in Diabetes Research. In 1994, the American Diabetes Foundation honored him as "Clinician of the Year." Baker was the author or co-author of more than 100 scholarly articles, numerous citations and abstracts and one book, Psychosomatic Families: Anorexia Nervosa in Context (1978), with Salvatore Minuchin. Contributions in his memory may be made to the Diabetes Research Center, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, One Children's Center, 34th and Civic Center Boulevard, Philadelphia, PA 19104.

Paul B. Coogan, plastics company executive, Southbury, Conn., on August 23, 1998. Coogan, who received an MBA from the University of Michigan, had worked at B.F. Goodrich in Ohio before joining Amf Alcort Inc. in Connecticut, where he was manufacturing and industrial relations manager.

1952

Paul D. Kaschel, retired insurance officer, Yonkers, N.Y., on April 25, 2000. Kaschel had worked in the property department of Alexander & Alexander Insurance in New York.

Kenneth Kriegel, real estate executive, Englewood, N.J., on August 11, 2000. Kriegel, who also had an MBA from Harvard Business School, was a general partner at Schultz Management in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

John W. Rhinehart, psychiatrist, Newtown, Conn., on April 15, 2000. Rhinehart, who received his medical degree from New York Medical College, practiced for many years at the Deep Brook Center in Newtown, Conn. Previously, he had served for a time as director and psychiatrist at Nutritional Counseling Services in Dallas, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale Medical School, and associate director of the psychiatric outpatient clinic at the Waterbury (Conn.) Hospital.

1929

Stephen C. Hartman, businessman, West Orange, N.J., on September 5, 2000. Hartman, who earned an MBA from the Business School, had been owner of Heartland Traditions Inc.

1964

Kenneth Haas, orchestra executive, Newton Upper Falls, Mass., on January 13, 2001. A native of Washington, D.C., Haas grew up in Brooklyn and on Long Island. At the College, he worked with the Columbia Players and other theater groups in nearly every capacity, and once played Big Julie in a student production of Guys and Dolls. Following graduation, he became the general manager of the Columbia Players. After several positions as technical director and stage manager at other theater companies, including the San Francisco Artists Workshop, the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center, Haas moved to managing symphony orchestras. He joined the New York Philharmonic as an assistant in 1967 and the Cleveland Orchestra in 1970. He became general manager of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 1975 and returned to the Cleveland Orchestra as general manager in 1976. He became managing director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1987. In addition, Haas served as an adviser to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Symphony Orchestra League. Following a cardiac arrest in 1996, Haas was left disabled and lived in rehabilitation centers in Texas and New Hampshire until being moved to a facility in Newton Upper Falls in 1998. A Fall 1998 Columbia College Today story reported how Itzhak Perlman, Kurt Masur and other celebrated musicians from four different orchestras held a benefit in Boston's Symphony Hall in October 1998 to help raise money to cover Haas's medical expenses.

Lars-Erik Nelson, journalist, Bethesda, Md., on November 20, 2000. Nelson was born in New York and attended the Bronx High School of Science before attending the College, where he majored in Russian. After a short stint with the Riverdale Press, he joined Reuters in 1967 as a foreign correspondent and was stationed in London, Moscow, Prague, New York and Washington. In 1977, he joined Newsweek as a diplomatic correspondent in Moscow but jumped to the Daily News in 1979 to become the paper's Washington Bureau chief. In 1993, Nelson joined Newsday as a columnist, but he returned to the Daily News in 1995 where he was primarily a columnist but also contributed other pieces. In addition, for the past two years, Nelson wrote for The New York Review of Books. Included among the many journalists and public figures who expressed sadness at Nelson's death was then-President Clinton, who praised Nelson as "one of New York's most distinctive voices and one of America's leading journalists" with a gift for "translating stories about our democracy for the American people." A memorial service for Nelson was held in the Roone Arledge Auditorium in Lerner Hall on January 23. [Editor's note: A fuller appreciation of Nelson's career will appear in the next issue.]

1965

John Huemer, educator and wrestling coach, Mt. Tabor, N.J., on December 22, 2000. See "In Memoriam"

1967

John E. Hawkins, attorney, Atlanta, on August 30, 2000. Hawkins, who had a medical degree from the Baylor College of Medicine and a law degree from the Georgia State College of Law, specialized in medical malpractice law.

1974

Thomas J. Hartland, Jr., attorney, Atlanta, on September 19, 2000. Hartland, who earned his law degree at Vanderbilt University in 1977, was a specialist in corporate finance and securities. He was a partner at the Atlanta firm of Troutman Sanders LLP, which he had joined in 1977.

2003

Andrea Melendez, student, New York, December 6, 2000. A native of Staten Island, Melendez had been an honor student, track star, and student body president at Tottenville High School. At the College, she was a distance runner on the track team, worked at the Spectator as a staff photographer and film technician, and was a member of Accion Boricua, Columbia's Puerto Rican club.

Compiled by Timothy P. Cross