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Deaths

 

Mr. Ballam, Jr., Trustee

Samuel Ballam

Mr. Samuel Ballam, Jr., honorary trustee, and retired president and CEO of Fidelcor, Inc. and The Fidelity Bank, died of heart failure on November 13, at the age of 84.

Mr. Ballam, Jr., a native of Philadelphia, attended Wharton Evening School in 1941 receiving a certificate of proficiency in business. He then served in World War II beginning in 1941 in the Quartermaster Corps of the U.S. Air Force and was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1943. He was discharged in 1946 as a captain. Mr. Ballam returned to Penn and received his B.A. from CGS in 1950. He then served his country again, as a captain in the Air Research and Development Command during the Korean War, 1951-1952. He completed the Stonier Graduate School of Banking, Rutgers University in 1955, the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School in 1959, and the National Trust School at Northwestern in 1961. 

He joined Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Company (now Fidelity Bank) as a messenger in 1936 and occupied various positions in the Investment Division, 1938-1954. In 1955 he was elected assistant to the president, and held successively important positions until he was elected president in 1971 and became CEO in 1975. He occupied similar positions in Fidelcor, Inc., until he retired in 1978.

In a resolution passed by the Trustees at their February 2001 meeting, when he resigned from the Board, Mr. Ballam, Jr. was designated an honorary trustee and was cited for:

"Demonstrating outstanding commitment as a Penn Trustee for 32 years, he was  a member of the Executive, Audit, and Long-Range Planning Committees and is an Emeritus member of the Budget and Finance Committee. He brought further strength and stability to Penn as a member of its Investment Board. A Medical Center Trustee for 23 years, he was also Chairman of the Trustee Board of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for 15 years and led the Board's Development Committee as Chairman Emeritus. Always concerned with improving the lot of those in need, he also served as Chair of the Overseers of the School of Social Work. With boundless enthusiasm and generosity of spirit, he committed himself to Penn even further as President of the General Alumni Society. As early as 1968, a year after receiving the Wharton Evening School Distinguished Award of Merit, he was given Penn's highest accolade, the Alumni Award of Merit."

The resolution ended with the statement, "We have admired his steadfast commitment to Penn and convey our profound gratitude to Samuel Ballam for the many years of wisdom, guidance and selfless action he has provided."

He is survived by his son, Samuel H. Ballam, III; daughter-in-law, Susan; daughter, Barbara Ballam Stephens, CW '68, son-in-law, Richard B. Stephens, C '68, G '68; and four grandsons, David C. Ballam, John F. Ballam, Andrew J. Ballam, Benjamin Stephens; and a granddaughter, Elizabeth Stephens.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, November 22, at 11 a.m. at the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr, followed by a luncheon.

 

Dr. Bodde, Chinese Studies

Derek Bodde

Dr. Derk Bodde, emeritus professor of Chinese Studies, died on November 3, at the age of 94.

Dr. Bodde was born in Massachusetts, and spent three years in China as a boy where his father taught. He received his A.B. in English from Harvard in 1930 and earned his Ph.D. in Chinese Studies from Leiden University, the Netherlands, in 1938. He began teaching at Penn that same year as an instructor and became a professor of Chinese Studies in 1950, remaining here until he retired in 1975. He served in World War II, first with the Research and Analysis Division of the Office of Strategic Services and later with the Office of War Information. During that time, he continued to return to Penn to lecture students in the Army Special Training Program on China. 

He was in Beijing, 1948-1949, as the first Fulbright Scholar, where he viewed first-hand the revolution and kept a diary that became Peking Dairy: A Year of Revolution (Henry Schuman, 1950) considered one of the best eyewitness accounts of the fall of the Kuomintang and the establishment of the Communist government in Beijing.

Dr. Bodde was a prolific writer with 14 books, 100 articles and 90 reviews covering subjects including philosophical and religious thought, folklore and festivals, history and social institution, literature and law. Some of his most influential books are Tolstoy and China, and the first volume of Fung Yu-lan's A History of Chinese Philosophy (1937). His last major work was Chinese Thought Society and Science (1991).

From 1980-1981, Dr. Bodde taught at Georgetown as a Distinguished Visiting Professor.

He was a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and served as president of the American Oriental Society. He received the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the Association of Asian Studies in 1995 in which it cited a line from the Analects of Confucius:  "Assiduous in the Pursuit of Learning; Tireless in the Teaching of Others."

He is survived by his daughter-in-law, Trix; and two grandchildren, Jennifer and Jessica.

 

Dr. Gasic, Pathology

Dr. Gabriel Jose Gasic, professor emeritus of pathology, died on November 1 at the age of 91.

Dr. Gasic was born in Punta Arenas, Chile and earned a doctorate in medicine from the University of Chile in Santiago at the age of 22. In 1965 he immigrated with his family to the U.S. and became a professor of pathology at Penn, where he remained until 1985. He then joined the Pennsylvania Hospital as a cancer researcher until 1992 at which time he retired.

He is survived by his wife, Tatiana; sons, Vladimir, Gregory Andrei, Miguel and Gabriel.

 

Dr. Heiberger, Career Services

Mary Heiberger

Dr. Mary Morris Heiberger, who provided career advice and assistance to thousands of graduate students,  died on November 10, at her home in Chestnut Hill at the age of 57. She had been ill for some time with ovarian cancer. Until this fall, she served as associate director of Career Services, where she had worked since 1976.

Dr. Heiberger was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, graduated from Oberlin College in 1968, and received a master's and an Ed.D. from Harvard.

After teaching at junior high schools in Massachusetts, Dr. Heiberger, and her husband, Richard, moved to Philadelphia. For most of her 27 years here, she worked in Career Services, coordinating and providing career services to master's, doctoral and postdoctoral students for nine of Penn's schools.

She was instrumental in the development and administration of the University's Alternative Careers Program for Ph.D.s, which ran 1980-1984. She was the author, with her long-time colleague Julia Miller Vick, of The Academic Job Search Handbook, now in its third edition, and with Ms. Vick and April Vahle Hamel, of The Graduate School Funding Handbook, both published by the Penn Press. In addition, since 1998 she co-wrote with Ms. Vick a monthly Career Talk column for the online edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Her dedication to graduate students motivated Dr. Heiberger to co-found, with Ms. Vick and Ms. Hamel, the Graduate Career Consortium 15 years ago, in order to bring together career services' professionals who provide services to graduate students at the nation's research institutions and to encourage those institutions not offering such services to provide them. She also served on the board of Sciences Next Wave, and on the Advisory Board of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation's "Re-envisioning the Ph.D." initiative.

Dr. Heiberger is survived by her husband, Richard, and daughter, Sara.

Contributions can be made in her name to the Morris Arboretum, 100 Northwestern Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19118.

A memorial service will be held on Thursday, December 4, at 4 p.m. in 200 College Hall.

 

Mr. Messina, Van Pelt Library

Mr. Anthony James "Tony" Messina, a bibliographic assistant in post-cataloging at the University libraries, died on October 4, at the age of 62.

He attended Bishop Neumann High School in South Philadelphia.  Mr. Messina started as a library stacks attendant  in the medical  library in 1973, became a library clerk at the University Libraries  in 1974, and was appointed bibliographic assistant in the Post-Cataloging department of the University Libraries in May of 1989. In May of 1994 he was recognized as an employee of "dedicated service" to the University Libraries; he had been working in Van Pelt Library for 20 years at that time.

 

Dr. Vauclain, Music

Dr. A. Constant Vauclain, emeritus professor of music, died on November 4 at the age of 95 from complications from liver cancer.

Dr. Vauclain, W '30, returned to Penn to complete his Ph.D. in composition in 1947, following studies in composition with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute of Music.  He then joined Penn's faculty that year as an assistant professor,  teaching undergraduate and graduate music theorists and composers until his retirement in 1979. He also held teaching positions at the Curtis Institute of Music and at Princeton, and founded the music theory program at The New School of Music, now part of Temple's Esther Boyer College of Music. He developed a harmonic system called "syntonality" that he felt would open up new expressive paths to musicians. He is survived by his daughter, Lisa.

 

 


  Almanac, Vol. 50, No. 13, November 18, 2003

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