Some more news from the Class Notes section of the Autumn ’08 issue:
- Barbara Ehrenreich ’63 has published a new book, This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation (Metropolitan Books, 2008) (p. 51)
- Francis Oliver Whipple ’48 died on March 16 in Richmond, BC. He started Reed prior to WW II, then returned after the war to earn his BA in chemistry. An MS and a PhD in chemistry followed, both earned at Oregon State University. The magazine quotes him as having fallen “in love” with the humanities program at Reed. “I would have to say it was one of the highlights of my experience at Reed … I found that it influenced me a great deal in my later life. My attitude later became one – when I was a teaching assistant, when I was in graduate school – to encourage students to get a liberal education foremost, and a scientific education secondary. And I still believe that and I would certainly encourage any young person to do that.” (p. 56)
- Francis F. Wong ’50 died on July 15 in Oakland, CA. Wong served as a medic during WW II and saw service on Omaha Beach on D-Day. After the war, he entered Reed and received a BA in chemistry. This was followed by more studies at University of Portland in organic biochemistry (MS ’51). Although he would work in research labs for the next 30 years, he was also a highly regarded photographer. Wong served as the official photographer for several Bay area fire departments, including San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, and specialized in photos that revealed the details of fire suppression in the field. (p. 56)
- Robert C. Brown ’51 died on August 2 in Danbury, CT. After completing his BA in chemistry at Reed, Brown studied law at George Washington University and University of Southern California (JD ’59). He subsequently moved to New York and spent the next 40 years as an intellectual property attorney and group patent attorney with the Union Carbide Corporation. (p. 57)
- Carol Daun Croft ’57 died on June 21 in Tacoma, WA. Croft’s academic pursuits were many and eclectic. After she earned a BA in chemistry from Reed, she studied linguistics, theology, and then chemistry again (Oklahoma State University and Washington State University) and returned to Reed to work as a research assistant from 1963-66. (p. 57)