DEATHS

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Dr. Emily Mudd, Pioneer in Marriage and Family Counseling

Dr. Emily Hartshorne Mudd, a pioneer in family planning, women's rights and the study of human sexuality who was with the University in formal and volunteer roles for more than sixty years, died on May 1, in her home at Haverford, at the age of 99.

Individually and with her husband, the Penn microbiologist Dr. Stuart Mudd, Dr. Emily Mudd had worked throughout her lifetime to break down barriers to the dissemination of birth control information, to incorporate into medical education the concept of human sexuality as part of family health, and to counsel individual patients from perspectives that were years ahead of their time when their work began.

Through her own writing and her collaborations with other giants in the field, including both Dr. Alfred Kinsey and Dr. William Masters, Dr. Mudd influenced generations of patients and practitioners during her distinguished career.

Born in Merion, on September 6, 1898, Emily Borie Hartshorne began her baccalaureate work at Vassar College, where she helped form a unit of the women's Land Army who took over farming tasks to free men for military service in World War I. After contracting typhoid fever from drinking fetid water in the field she was advised to seek outdoor settings, and she took up landscape architecture in Massachusetts, where she earned a degree at the Lowthorpe School in Groton. In Boston she met and married Stuart Mudd, who was then a fellow at Harvard Medical School--and instead of practicing landscape architecture she became his volunteer laboratory assistant for the next ten years, assisting him at Harvard, at the Rockefeller Institute in New York and at the Henry Phipps Institute of the University of Pennsylvania.

When the Mudds and several of their friends established the Maternal Health Center in 1927, at a time when state law made even the dissemination of information on birth control a crime, Emily Mudd became assistant to the director. She was later to say that she could take the risk because she was expecting her second child at the time, and an obscure law prohibited the jailing of pregnant women. Although the clinic was raided three weeks after it opened, there were no arrests.

In 1933, when the Mudds and other activists set up the Marriage Council of Philadelphia (now the Penn Council for Relationships), the group asked Emily Mudd to direct it, noting that she could take her degree "on the job." She enrolled in the School of Social Work for her M.S.W. in 1936, and then in sociology, where she took her Ph.D. in 1950. Later she was to received the honorary degree LL.D. in 1972.

She was appointed assistant professor of family study in psychiatry at the School of Medicine in 1952, becoming the third woman on the School's faculty; and she became the School's first woman full professor in 1956.

The co-author with Stuart Mudd of 15 scientific papers from the volunteer phase of her career, she was to publish another 106 of her own and 64 with other co-authors, writing extensively for professional journals to reach practitioners but also publishing in major national magazines as a way of reaching families with the information gleaned from case histories and major longitudinal studies she undertook.

She published five books: The Practice of marriage Counseling; Readings on Marriage and Family Relations; Man and Wife, A Sourcebook of Family Attitudes, Sexual Behavior and Marriage Counseling; Marriage Counseling, A Casebook; and Success in Family Living. She also helped Alfred Kinsey edit the "second Kinsey Report" on Sexual Behavior in the Human Female , and as consultant to the Masters & Johnson clinic in St. Louis she contributed thousands of case histories for their work.

As a volunteer holding dozens of positions in local, state and national organizations--and such international ones as membership in the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health--Dr. Mudd exerted her influence on behalf of openness about birth control and sex education. What she described as her most difficult assignment, however, was her service as co-chair in 1972 of then--Governor Milton Shapp's commission to review the state's abortion-control law--a commission that was to arrive at a split decision favoring choice. On campus she was active in mentoring other women faculty and was president in 1962-63 of the Women's Faculty Club (now Association of Women Faculty and Administrators).

In 1967 she retired as director of the Marriage Council and became emeritus professor, but she continued to be active professionally until well into her eighties, writing and counseling teens in Philadelphia.

Among her many honors were the Gimbel Philadelphia Award, the Governor's designation as a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania, France's Médaille d'Honeur, Societé d'Encouragement au Progrès, and the Lucretia Mott Award of Women's Way. An award from the American Civil Liberties Union, given in 1989, was presented with the citation,

Whereas Dr. Mudd has been a tireless advocate of women's rights, reproductive freedom, and family values for more than sixty years,

Whereas she has used the law as a light to illuminate the dark corners of our society,

Now, therefore, we who have benefited from her courage and been inspired by her integrity, do hereby confer upon her this Award with our gratitude for her stalwart support in the struggle for civil liberties.

Widowed in 1975, Dr. Mudd married in 1981 Frederick G. Gloeckner, who predeceased her. She is survived by two sons, John and S. Harvey; two daughters, Emily Mitchell and Margaret; 10 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Shannon Schieber, a Distinguished Wharton Student

Shannon Schieber, a first-year Wharton doctoral candidate from Chevy Chase, MD, died May 7 at the age of 24.

Ms Schieber earned high honors at Duke University in Durham, NC, where she earned a bachelor of science degree in three years, with triple majors in math, philosophy and economics. Before coming to Wharton last fall with a full fellowship from the S.S. Huebner Foundation, she had worked for the financial advisory services arm of Coopers & Lybrand LLP in New York City for a year after her graduation from Duke. Then, she went to work for Watson Wyatt Worldwide in Washington, DC, where she performed asset/liability modeling and software development--in part following in her father's footsteps. Sylvester Schieber, a prominent economist, was chosen by the Clinton administraiton to a 13-member panel to help revamp Social Security.

Ms. Schieber's research interests included international social security programs, risk management strategies of American corporations entering emerging markets, and securitization of the insurance industry, according to the biographical sketch on the S.S. Huebner Foundation web site. Outside school she enjoyed travel, scuba diving, lacrosse, horseback riding, rock climbing, opera, and cheering the Redskins.

Neighbors in the quiet neighborhood along the 200 block of South 23rd Street described Ms. Schieber as "an attractive, friendly woman who sometimes greeted them from her balcony." A Wharton Journal article from November 17, 1997, the "Wharton Ph.D. Experience" described her as a lively and outgoing Ph.D. student.

Her survivors include her parents and a brother. Funeral services are scheduled today in Chevy Chase.

Romeo Belonia, Accountant

At presstime Almanac learned of the death of Romeo G. Belonia, an accountant in the Comptroller's Office since 1980 who has been responsible for HUP/CPUP accounts. An obituary is being prepared with the help of his colleagues for the May 26 issue.

Memorial Service: Steve Murray

Friends and colleagues are invited to the campus memorial service for Steven Murray on Tuesday, May 12, 1998. It will be held at 4 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom of the Penn Tower Hotel. A reception will follow the memorial. All are welcome to attend and share memories of Steve.

The family has requested that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to:

Correction: In the photo caption in last week's obituary on Professor Dorothea Jameson, a letter was inadvertently omitted from her first name. We regret the error.--K.C.G.

Almanac, Vol. 44, No. 33, May 12, 1998

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