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Fall 2001

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Extended Family

OBITUARIES: FACULTY AND STUDENTS

FACULTY

Donald Fairbairn, 85, of Kingston [Ontario], formerly of Amherst, died April 5 in Kingston General Hospital. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Feb. 4 1916, he was the son of the late Arthur and Maria (Spratt) Fairbairn. He received a bachelor’s degree from Queen’s University in Quebec, Canada, and a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y. He did a post doctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pa. Raised in Ottawa, he lived in Amherst and Morrisville, Vt., moving to Kinston in the 1980s. He was a Canadian Army veteran of World War II. Mr. Fairbairn was a professor in the department of parasitology at McDonald College at McGill University in Quebec. He was later appointed head of the zoology department at the University of Massachusetts in 1962. He had also served as a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. At UMass, he established the international center for research in parasitology and parasitic diseases, attracting scientists from many countries. Active in university affairs, he served as a consultant, adviser and officer of national and international scientific societies, and as an editor of scientific journals. His wife, Mary (Crawford) Fairbairn, died in 1999. He leaves two daughters, Stephanie Candito of Hyannis and Bonnie Parsons of Buffalo, N.Y., and seven grandchildren. A son, Ian Fairbairn, died earlier.

(Daily Hampshire Gazette, 4/12/01)

KARL N. HENDRICKSON 86, of the North Amherst section [of Amherst], died Saturday at a nursing home in Northampton. He was professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. He was the first hire in the civil engineering department, and taught there until his retirement in 1979. Born in Pownal, Maine, he was raised in Bangor and Brewer, Maine. He attended the University of Maine and Harvard University, earning a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering. He also attended the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md.
He was a member of North Congregational Church, where he taught Sunday school and sang in the choir for 50 years. A Navy veteran of World War II, he trained Seabees at Camp Peary, VA. His geotechnical projects included the Port Jervis, N.Y., rock tunnels, the Jamestown Bridge in Narragansett Bay, a General Motors Corp. assembly plant in Framingham, and foundation designs for overseas refineries. He was a surveyor and navigator for the 1953 National Geographic Society Greenland expedition and worked on the Upper Baker Dam in Washington, Cabin Creek (Colo.) Pumped Storage, Polaris submarine periscope assembly stabilization at Kollmorgen Corp. in Northampton and several highway, dam, and bridge projects in the Connecticut River Valley. He wrote an engineering textbook and was a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Boston Society of Civil Engineers and a member of the Geological Society of America. He received the Engineering alumni Award. He was a town meeting member and served on the Clean Air Committee and the Planning Board. He sang in the Hampshire Chorale, was an Eagle Scout and scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 504. His wife, the former Dorothy F. Herd, died in 1989. He leaves two sons, Peter of Centralia, Wash., and Andrew H. of Williamsburg; a brother, Edward of Sebastian, Fla.; and five grandchildren.

(Springfield, Union- News, 5/1/01)

HERBERT A. HERCHENREDER, 71, of 84 Lee Road [So. Deerfield], a retired professor, died Thursday at home. He was an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst for 33 years and retired in 1993. He previously worked as a civilian electrical engineer involved in sonar research for the Navy at its submarine base in Groton, Conn. Born and schooled in St. Louis, Mo. He lived in South Deerfield since 1968 and was a well-known story teller. He was a graduate of Missouri State University, received a master’s degree from the University of Connecticut and attended Worcester Polytechnical Institute. He leaves a son, Richard, and a daughter, Katren Hoyden, both of South Deerfield and their mother, Jane E. Herchenreder of Turners Falls section of Montague; and two grandchildren.

(Springfield Union News, 3/10/01)

PAUL H. JENNINGS ‘60, 62, of Manhattan, a former professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, died Dec. 25 at the University Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska. He was a U. S. Army veteran. Mr. Jennings was a faculty member of the UMass Department of Plant and Soil Sciences for 12 years. He conducted research on innovative production techniques for vegetable crops and on the physiology of low-temperature stress in plants. He was honored as a Fellow of the American Society for Horticultural Science. He was also very active in the Faculty Senate, including service as secretary for two years. He later became head of the Horticulture Department at Kansas State University of Manhattan in 1982. Besides his parents, he leaves his wife, Bette (Baker) Jennings; two daughters, Deborah Wainright of Overland Park, Kan., and Diane Jennings of Manhattan; a son, David of Tempe, AZ; a sister, Constance Holmes of Maui, Hawaii; two brothers, James of Shawnee Mission, Kan., and Bill of CA; and two grandchildren. . .

(Gazette.net)

ROSA S. JOHNSTON, 83, of Northfield, a retired Extension associate professor of Home Economics, died March 17. She served the University more than 34 years before retiring in 1972. A direct descendent of the original founders of Northfield and Erving, she was a member of Historic Deerfield, Pioneer Valley Historic Association, Pocumtuck Valley Historic Association, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association and the Northfield Historic Museum She also conducted land research in the area. She attended Nasson College in Springvale, Maine, and graduate school at Cornell University. She leaves her husband of 41 years, Robert Johnston, and several nieces and nephews.

(Campus Chronicle)

STEPHEN R. REISMAN, 58, of Bay Road, died Aug. 20 at home. Born April 25, 1942, in Far Rockaway, N.Y., he was the son of the late Jacob and Rose (Barmash) Reisman. He received a bachelor’s degree from City College in New York, and later received a doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.He had been a resident of Amherst since 1970. He taught in the field of social psychology at the University of Massachusetts and later served as chief psychologist at Monson State Hospital. He began work in 1986 at Valley Programs, now known as ServiceNet, where he was senior clinical leader, having previously held various positions, including director of mental retardation services. He also had a private practice in the area. He was a member of the Jewish Community of Amherst. He was an avid bicyclist and hiker.He leaves his wife of 27 years, Susan Kotler Reisman; a son, David Reisman of Brandford, Conn.; a daughter, Beth Reisman of Amherst; and a sister, Elaine Goldberg of Brooklyn, N.Y.

(Daily Hampshire Gazette, 8/21/00)

JOHN ROY, 70, of 10 Bray Court [Pelham], and formerly of Springfield, a longtime educator and artist, died on Thursday at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton. He was a professor in the art department of the University of Massachusetts from 1965 to his retirement in 1994. He taught previously at Florida State University in Tallahassee and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Born in Springfield, he graduated from St. John’s Preparatory School in Danvers, received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts from Yale University and also received an Alice Kimball English traveling fellowship. He served in Germany with the Army in the 1950s. As a Yale graduate student, he studied with Josef Albers and became recognized as a foremost theorist on the perceptual effect of color in the visual arts. His paintings are represented in major collections in Europe and this country, including the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Rose Art Museum at Brandies University in Boston and Worcester Art Museum. He received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant in 1963 and had five one-man exhibitions in New York City. In 1964 and 1965, he illustrated books designated among the 50 best books of the year by the American Institute of Graphic Artists. In 1999, his works formed a one-man exhibition at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts. He directed the UMass art department’s computing facility in the use of computers to study the sensory effect of color and supervised the installation of the music department’s electronic studio. As a founder of Artists, Research, Technology Inc., he engaged the multi-disciplinary resources computer scientists and visual artists in the application of offset printing technology in the fine arts. He mentored many students in the art department graduate program. He leaves his wife, the former Margery Hague; a son, Paul of Menlo Park, Calif.; two daughters, Ellen Roy of Pelham and Karen Travers of the Florence section of Northampton; and a granddaughter.

(Springfield, Union News, 6/15/01)

STUDENTS

MATTHEW D. SMITH ‘04, of 2380 Petersham Rd., [Athol] died Friday, Jan. 5, 2001, of natural causes. He leaves his parents, David A. and Kathleen G. (Greene) Smith of Athol; two brothers, Mark A. and Peter F. Smith both of Athol; his maternal grandmother, Edith E. Greene of Delhi N.Y.; six aunts; one uncle and many cousins. He was born in Dover, NH on Aug. 4, 1978, and was a resident of Athol for 12 years. He was a 1997 graduate of Gardner High School and was in his third year at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he was majoring in computers and linguistics. He also attended the Rochester Institute of Technology. He began programming computers when he was nine years old and recently developed the program MICQ that runs on nearly all operating systems and is used by tens of thousands of users worldwide. MICQ is a command line oriented clone of the ICQ program and is available for free at www.phanto.iquest.net . He was active in the Athol Boy Scouts Troop 72 that met at St. Francis Church. He was the first student from the Athol/Royalston school district to qualify to participate in the Sate Geography Bee; he qualified in the fifth grade. In sixth grade he was the Athol/Royalston School District Champion in the geography and math bees. He took the SAT’s while in seventh grade as part of the John Hopkins Talent Search. While attending Gardner High School he played football for two years, participated in the school’s musical production of Grease and was named to the "Who’s Who in American High Schools’ in his senior year. He worked part-time in high school at Wendy’s in Gardner where he was awarded "Employee of the Month." He delivered newspapers for the Athol Daily News for six years. He was a member of the Westminster Baptist Church.

(Athol Daily News, 1/8/01)

PAUL T. WINSKE, UWW, 35, of Amherst, formerly of Marlborough, died April 13 unexpectedly at home. Born in Marlborough Nov. 3, 1965, he was the son of Patricia F. (Kelley) Winske of Marlborough and the late Earl "Jack" Winske Jr. He was a 1984 graduate of Marlborough High School and a 1986 graduate of Newbury Junior College with a degree in hotel management. He also attended the University of Massachusetts and recently re-enrolled as a senior at the University’s College Without Walls, studying nonprofit management. Mr. Winske had worked for 10 years at the Stavros Center for independent Living in Amherst, the last year as an access coordinator. He had also worked at his parent’s flower shop, The Flower Basket, in Marlborough for several years. He was a former member of Boy Scout Troop 3 of Marlborough and a former assistant Scout Master in Williamstown. He became an Eagle Scout in 1984. He was a member and former board member of the Hadley Lions Club. He was vice chairman of the Rehabilitation Council for the Mass Rehabilitation Commission. He had served on a panel with the commissioner of the Social Security Administration last October in Boston. He volunteered with the Easter Seal Society, the Marlborough Lions Club and the Muscular Dystrophy Association. He had also attended the Easter Seals Camp Agassiz in Poland, Maine, since age 7. He played wheelchair basketball for the Baystate Wheelers out of Springfield. He was a mentor for young men in the Amherst area. Besides his mother, he leaves his fiancée, John W. Usinas of Marlborough; two brothers, John E. Winske and Robert P. Winske, both of Medford; his wife, Charlene (Crumb) Winske, and her son, Collin Crumb, both of Orange; and his paternal grandmother, Anne R. (Rizzelli) Winske of Marlborough.

(Amherst Bulletin, 4/20/01)

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