Deaths |
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April 19, 2016, Volume 62, No. 31 |
Robert E. Coughlin, City & Regional Planning
John R. Rockwell, Penn Athletics and Penn Museum
Edmund B. Spaeth, Jr., Law School
Robert E. Coughlin, City & Regional Planning
Robert E. Coughlin, G’64, a former senior fellow in the department of city & regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, died of heart failure at his home in Chestnut Hill on January 7. He was 88 years old.
Dr. Coughlin was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Roxbury Latin School, then earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College, his master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his doctorate in city & regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania.
He served in the US Navy before and after college and attained the rank of lieutenant junior grade.
From 1955 to 1961, he worked for the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, playing a major role in preparing the city’s comprehensive plan. He was tasked with developing an analytic framework relating the city’s capital program and budget to the comprehensive plan.
From 1962 to 1980, he was vice president of the Philadelphia office of the Regional Science Research Institute. He directed research relating to regional and urban economic issues, and on the impact of urbanization on the environment, open-space preservation and farmland protection.
In 1981, Dr. Coughlin and John C. Keene, who is now professor emeritus of city & regional planning at Penn, founded Coughlin, Keene & Associates, a consulting firm in the field of planning and policy analysis. Dr. Coughlin led projects concerning analysis and evaluation of land-use regulations, farmland protection, urban sprawl and growth management. He also looked at tourism, population and economic projections, and served as an expert witness in zoning cases. He and Dr. Keene produced the seminal National Agricultural Lands Study: The Protection of Farmland—A Reference Guidebook for State and Local Governments.
From 1982 to 1993, Dr. Coughlin was a senior fellow in Penn’s department of city & regional planning, where he taught land-use analysis and land-use policy evaluation. Early in his time at Penn, he received an award from the University’s Research Foundation for a project with Ann L. Strong entitled Preparation of Graphic Illustrations for Publication of the Urban Vegetation Planning Study.
In 1986, he and Dr. Keene, along with two other colleagues formed a committee to help the victims of the earthquake that took place in El Salvador that October (Almanac November 11, 1986).
Dr. Coughlin is survived by his wife, Louisa Spottswood; two daughters, Nina Cook and Bess; one son, Ely; three grandchildren; a brother; and a sister.
Donations in his memory may be made to the North American Guild of Change Ringers, c/o Bruce Butler, 829 N. 25th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19130. |
John R. Rockwell, Penn Athletics and Penn Museum
John Richard (Rick) Rockwell, W’64, WG’66, Overseer of Penn Athletics and the Penn Museum, died of a stroke on March 24 while on vacation in Charleston, South Carolina. Mr. Rockwell, a resident of Owings Mills, Maryland, was 73 years old.
Mr. Rockwell was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and raised in Pennsville, New Jersey. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration at the Wharton School, then served in the Army in Germany from 1967 to 1969. He worked in sales for the Container Corporation of America, then joined Wellington Management and the Vanguard Group. He moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1982 and became a senior vice president for retirement plan services at T. Rowe Price. He retired in 2007.
Mr. Rockwell was a longtime member of the board of the University of Pennsylvania Athletics Overseers. He chaired the Basketball Board for Penn Athletics and was a member of the Football Board. He endowed the men’s basketball head coach position and established the John R. Rockwell Gymnasium at Penn’s Hutchinson Gym.
Since 2008, he had also served on the Board of Overseers of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology. He was a member of the Finance and Marketing and Acquisitions Committees. He underwrote in full the conservation of the two famed stone reliefs in the Chinese Rotunda commissioned by the Emperor Taizong of his battle horses Saluzi and Curly, and the highly popular exhibition In the Artifact Lab. He was lead underwriter of the exhibition Native American Voices: The People—Here and Now. He was also lead annual supporter of excavation work at Abydos, Egypt, by Josef Wegner, associate curator, Egyptian section, and was a longtime member of the Platinum Circle of the Loren Eiseley Society. In 2014, he received the Marian Angell Godfrey Boyer Medal for distinguished service at the Museum (Almanac May 13, 2014).
Earlier this year, Mr. Rockwell was the recipient of Penn’s Alumni Award of Merit (Almanac January 12, 2016). He chaired the Class of 1964’s 50th Reunion, served as Class President and was a former member of the Penn Alumni Council and the Parents Executive Board.
Mr. Rockwell is survived by his wife, Frances, and two sons, Scott and Jordan. |
Edmund B. Spaeth, Jr., Law School
Edmund B. Spaeth, Jr., the retired president judge of the Pennsylvania Superior Court and former senior fellow at Penn Law, died of congestive heart failure at Cathedral Village in Philadelphia on March 31. He was 95 years old.
Judge Spaeth was born in Washington, then moved to Mount Airy. He graduated from Germantown Friends School and Harvard College. He served in US Navy intelligence operations during World War II and later joined the Naval Reserve, retiring with the rank of commander.
In 1948, he graduated from Harvard Law School. He became an associate with the Philadelphia law firm MacCoy, Evans & Lewis.
In 1964, he was appointed a judge of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas and was subsequently elected to a full term. In 1973, he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Pennsylvania Superior Court but was defeated in the primary election. Later that year, he was appointed to fill a second vacancy on the Superior Court and was elected to a full 10-year term.
Judge Spaeth joined the faculty of Penn’s Law School as a lecturer in 1973. His principal subject was evidence, but he also taught professional responsibility. In 1985, he became a senior fellow at the Law School. He cofounded and directed the Law School’s Center for Professionalism (Almanac October 20, 1987). In 1991, he received the Harvey Levin Award for Excellence in teaching at the Law School (Almanac May 14, 1991). He taught at Penn until 1997.
In 1983, he became president judge of the Superior Court and served until his term expired in 1986. From 1986-2002, he acted as counsel to the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton. In 1988, he became chair of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, a nonprofit corporation created to advance reforms of the judicial system.
In 1989, Governor Bob Casey appointed him chairman of the state Judicial Inquiry and Review Board. The following year, he resigned, telling Governor Casey that the judicial system was too dysfunctional for the board to do its job. The governor appointed him to a commission to recommend changes in that system. Among the commission’s recommendations was abolishing the review board and replacing it with a system of judicial discipline more open to the public, in which the prosecutorial and judicial functions would be separated, and the ability of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to undo the disciplinary order limited. The changes became law.
He is survived by his wife, Nancy Wiltbank; his son, Edmund B. III; two daughters, Eleanor Lee Simons and Suzanne Marinell; four grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; two step-great-grandchildren; two brothers; and several nieces and nephews. A memorial service will be at 2 p.m. on April 24 at Germantown Friends Meeting, 31 West Coulter Street in Philadelphia. Donations may be made to the Squirrel Island Library, Squirrel Island, ME 04570, or to Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, Three Parkway, Suite 1320, Philadelphia, PA 19102. |
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