Executives

Ronald R. Thoma, 78, of Churchville, a retired packaging company executive and former tavern owner, died Tuesday, March 19, of respiratory failure at home. Born and raised in the Juniata Park section of Philadelphia, Mr. Thoma graduated from Frankford High School and Temple University by attending at night. He retired in 2000 as a senior vice president after 46 years at Crown Cork & Seal, a packaging firm in Philadelphia. He and his family owned and operated the Coach Dog Tavern at 1063 Street Rd. in Southampton for 23 years, ending in 1994, when it was sold and razed to make room for an Applebee's.

Paul T. Murray has been appointed to the board of A Woman's Place , a Chalfont organization committed to the empowerment of women and to ending intimate and domestic violence for all. He is president of PTM Wealth Management. Eric Pritchard, a partner in the business and finance department at Kleinbard Bell & Brecker L.L.P., has been appointed to the board of the Montgomery County Industrial Development Authority, which helps companies finance projects with money secured from private-sector financial institutions.

Samuel Moses, 93, of Ivyland, a decorated World War II veteran and career executive with Sears, Roebuck & Co., died Saturday, March 2, of renal failure at home. Born in 1919 in Donora, Pa., to Asa and Mary Moses, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1939 on graduation from Donora High School, where he and future baseball Hall of Famer Stan Musial were teammates. Mr. Moses, a gunner and radio operator, was stationed with the 11th Heavy Bombardment Group on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese planes came roaring over Pearl Harbor.

NEW YORK - With 61/2 meaningful minutes left in his season, St. Joseph's guard Langston Galloway took out a just-vacated chair on the Virginia Commonwealth bench, full-throttle, chasing after a basketball that was going to be awarded to the Hawks anyway. Galloway didn't know that, didn't care. This was the same Brooklyn court where he had sacrificed a tooth in November, when the Hawks' season held so much promise. If you're going to give the St. Joseph's Hawks a proper burial, do it with perspective.

Daniel F. McGill Sr., 81, of Rhawnhurst, a retired insurance marketing executive with a sense of humor, died Monday, March 4, of cancer at a relative's home in Horsham Township. For 40 years, Mr. McGill worked for Aetna Inc. in Center City. He led the marketing of the firm's products to independent insurance brokerages in the Philadelphia area and South Jersey. Born in Rhawnhurst, he lived there for most of his life before moving in with a daughter last October when his health failed.

WASHINGTON - President Obama on Monday will nominate Wal-Mart's Sylvia Mathews Burwell as his next budget director, a senior administration official said. If confirmed by the Senate, Burwell would take the helm at the Office of Management and Budget at a time of heated budget battles between the White House and congressional Republicans. She would also bring more diversity to Obama's second-term cabinet following criticism that many top jobs were going to white men. The president will announce Burwell's nomination during a White House ceremony Monday morning, said the official, who requested anonymity in order to confirm the nomination ahead of Obama.

BEIJING - In an unusual action that quickly sparked debate online, Chinese authorities showed a live broadcast Friday of four foreign drug smugglers in their last hours before execution for killing 13 fishermen. A shocking and apparently unprecedented form of reality TV for China, the program on state-run television featured all the staples of modern current events coverage - experts, pundits, instant analysis. It cut away as the convicted men were being led from their cells, hands tied up with rope, toward their lethal injections.

James E. Downey Sr., 84, of Springfield, Delaware County, a banking executive who devoted himself to Catholic organizations, died Saturday, Feb. 23, of respiratory failure at Bryn Mawr Terrace. Mr. Downey began working for Beneficial Mutual Savings Bank in 1949 as a bookkeeper. He later moved to the company's audit department. When he retired in 1993, he was senior vice president and treasurer. He was instrumental in expanding the branch network and increasing the bank's assets.

The Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, a nonprofit advocacy group for independent, locally-owned businesses that value social and environmental impact as well as profit, has concluded its search for a new executive director, hiring Jamie Gauthier. Most recently, Gauthier was program officer at the Philadelphia arm of Local Initiatives Support Corp., a national nonprofit development agency, where she has worked for the past eight years. The West Philadelphia resident has also founded several community-based organizations and, according to her LinkedIn profile, was a sales and use tax accountant with DuPont Co. A graduate of Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania, Gauthier will start work at SBN on March 13, succeeding Leanne Krueger-Braneky, who was the group's only executive director since its founding in 2001, serving in that role since 2004.