Walter Graham Arader, Honorary Trustee

Walter Graham Arader, W’42, honorary Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania and former Pennsylvania state official, died at home in Radnor, Pennsylvania on January 18. He was 95 years old.

Mr. Arader earned his BS in economics from the Wharton School and was a member of Penn’s first Naval ROTC Unit. He served in the Navy during World War II and achieved the rank of Commander in the Naval Reserve in 1958.

His career spanned fields such as fundraising, printing, education, government and management consulting. After his military service, he worked in Penn’s Development Office. Years later, he was a key volunteer during the Program for the Eighties fundraising campaign at Penn.

He joined the printing firm of Edward Stern & Company in Philadelphia in 1952 and assumed financial and managerial control in 1959. He served as president of the Graphic Arts Association of Philadelphia in 1964. He effected the merger of Stern with Majestic Press in 1965 and served as president of the combined operations. He also operated a consulting firm that specialized in mergers and acquisitions for small to medium sized companies on the East Coast.

In 1971, he was appointed as Pennsylvania’s secretary of commerce. He later served as commissioner of the Pennsylvania Securities Commission from 1974 to 1980.

In 1974, he guided a bill through the state legislature proposing that the state purchase the papers of Louis I. Kahn on behalf of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The purchase was finalized in 1976, and the following year, the Commission placed the Louis I. Kahn Collection on permanent loan to the University of Pennsylvania (Almanac October 22, 1991).

Mr. Arader was elected to Penn’s Board of Trustees in 1979 (Almanac January 23, 1979) and participated on the Executive, Budget & Finance and External Affairs Committees, as well as the Facilities & Campus Planning Committee, which he chaired. At Penn, he was also a founding member of the Commonwealth Relations Committee, a board member of the Wharton Alumni Association, chairman of the American Civilization Advisory Council and a member of the American Selection Committee for the Thouron Scholarship Program. The Morris Arboretum, the Penn Museum and the Penn Fund benefitted from his support.

Mr. Arader is survived by four children, W. Graham Arader, III (Bo-In), Georgeann Arader Berkinshaw, C’74 (Edwin R. Berkinshaw), Christopher, C’75, and Alexander, WG’82 (Adrienne Carhartt Arader), 14 grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and one sister, Josephine H. Hueber.

Donations in his memory may be made to Harriton House, 500 Harriton Road, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010, where a beekeepers’ club that Mr. Arader started still exists.

Richard “Buz” Cooper, Penn Cancer Center and Leonard Davis Institute

Richard “Buz” Cooper, a hematologist/oncologist, founder of Penn’s Cancer Center and senior fellow at Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute (LDI) of Health Economics, died in New York City on January 15 from complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 79 years old.

Dr. Cooper grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis, then did an internship, residency and fellowship in hematology at what was then Harvard Medical Services of Boston City Hospital. In 1963, he held a fellowship at the National Cancer Institute and then became an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.

In 1971, he joined the University of Pennsylvania. He founded Penn Medicine’s Cancer Center (later renamed the Abramson Cancer Center), which he directed from 1977-1985. He was a member of the Senate Advisory Committee (Almanac November 11, 1975) and the Senate Committee on Administrative Structure (Almanac January 17, 1978).

He was dean of the Medical College of Wisconsin from 1985-1994, then founded and directed the school’s Health Policy Institute, now the Institute for Health and Society, from 1994-2004.

In 2005, he returned to Penn as a senior fellow in the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. During this time, he challenged the Dartmouth Atlas view that the waste and inefficiencies of physicians and healthcare systems were responsible for the large geographical variation in healthcare costs in the US. Dr. Cooper contended that the variation stemmed from poverty, as large segments of the population are unable to obtain routine healthcare over a lifetime, resulting in massive numbers of advanced morbidities later in life that are expensive to treat.

At LDI, he also researched the question of whether or not the country would have enough future physicians, and advocated for a full scope of practice for advanced practice nurses.

In 2011, Dr. Cooper became director of the Center for the Future of the Healthcare Workforce at New York Institute of Technology. Shortly before his death, he completed a book on the effect of income inequality on poor healthcare outcomes and high healthcare spending. The book, titled Poverty and the Myths of Health Care Reform, is scheduled to be published this summer by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Dr. Cooper is survived by his wife, Barrie Cassileth; one daughter, Stephanie (David) Cooper Cornelius; one son, Jonathan (Eileen Harris); three grandchildren, Jordan, Matthew and Halle; and Andrea Pastor. A memorial event commemorating Dr. Cooper’s life and contributions is being planned for family, friends and colleagues at a future date. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Cooper Family Research Fund, care of the University of Pennsylvania Abramson Cancer Center Development Office, 3535 Market Street, Ste. 750, Philadelphia, PA 19104.

Stephen Kyle Wilshusen, PhD Student

Stephen “Kyle” Wilshusen, a first-year Ph.D. student in computer science at Penn’s School of Engineering & Applied Science, died in Philadelphia on December 31. He was 25 years old.

Mr. Wilshusen grew up in Boulder, Colorado. He attended Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, where he earned his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in math and computer science in 2015. He received an honorable mention in the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program in 2014, as well as Hendrix College’s Robert C. Eslinger Computer Science Award in 2015.

A summer internship in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh turned into a yearlong position working in vineyards and orchards with a team learning how to better estimate crop yields. He co-authored an article entitled “Automated visual yield estimation in vineyards,” published in 2014 in the Journal of Field Robotics.

Mr. Wilshusen came to Penn in 2015 and began his dissertation work in agricultural robotics. He worked in Penn’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) lab. 

He is survived by his parents, Richard Wilshusen and Virginia Pool; his grandfather; two great aunts; five aunts; three uncles and 12 first cousins. A Memorial Meeting will take place on February 6 at 2 p.m. at Crest View Elementary School, 1897 Sumac Avenue, Boulder.

His parents ask that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to Growing Gardens (http://www.growinggardens.org) or the Second Wind Fund (http://www.thesecondwindfund.org).