Phi Beta Kappa

The announcement said Ursinus College has just established a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the national academic honor society. Big deal. It went on to say that the school had worked hard to get the chapter, applying over and over for about 40 years. What's wrong with Ursinus? What took them so long? Every college and university - from Harvard and Yale to Kalamazoo College - has a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Right? Wrong. Temple University has one. Bryn Mawr doesn't.

Rutgers University-Camden has a new academic honor society: Phi Beta Kappa. "Phi Beta Kappa is the most prestigious liberal-arts honor society in the United States," said Margaret Marsh, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "Our students now will be able to become part of an honored and distinguished tradition. " Though Phi Beta Kappa is a liberal-arts society, all undergraduate students will be eligible for nomination provided they meet the criteria, which include a grade point average of 3.5 for seniors and 3.8 for juniors and advanced foreign-language study.

Ruth Greene Aberle, 96, of Ambler, a former private-school teacher who was active in local organizations, died Sunday at Chestnut Hill Hospital. Mrs. Aberle was born in Moriah Center, N.Y., and graduated from Far Rockaway High School on Long Island. She earned a bachelor's degree, Phi Beta Kappa, from Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1920. For the next six years, she taught at St. Margaret's School for Girls in Waterbury, Conn., and during this period earned a master's degree from Columbia University in New York City.

A lady I knew slightly, and admired, died not long ago, and I learned from her obituary that she had received the highest scholastic record in her college's history - but failed to make Phi Beta Kappa because she never learned to dive and got low grades in physical education. This mention took me back to my days as a member of Troop 4, Beaver Patrol, in the Boy Scouts of America, when my ultimate ambition was to become an Eagle Scout, the highest rank in scouting. Alas, I was never able to make it, for although I had many more merit badges than were required, I could never pass the life saving test, which was a requisite for the rank.

John B. Hayter, 50, a lawyer who turned his life around in his mid-40s and impressed those he knew with his determination, died Tuesday at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital after suffering complications from AIDS. He lived in South Philadelphia. Since 1984, Mr. Hayter had specialized in personal bankruptcy law in his office on Chestnut Street in Center City, representing hundreds of people whose homes were being foreclosed. "He thought he was helping people who needed it," said his longtime friend, David Karge.

John J. Danaher, 97, of Haddon Township, a longtime teacher of physics and chemistry at Camden High School, died Thursday at Leader Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in West Deptford. Mr. Danaher graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., in 1913. An Army veteran of World War I, he served as a first lieutenant in field artillery. Mr. Danaher worked at the Pierce Arrow Motor Co. in Buffalo, N.Y., before taking a teaching position a Camden High in 1921.

Rebecca Lobo, a Phi Beta Kappa who led Connecticut's basketball team to an undefeated championship season, was honored last night as the NCAA's Woman of the Year. Lobo, the women's college basketball player of the year and a member of the 1996 U.S. Olympic team, was chosen from among 392 nominees. The NCAA award recognizes excellence in athletics, academics and community leadership. "Rebecca is an outstanding example of what college athletics is all about," NCAA executive director Cedric Dempsey said.

She looked good on paper. Her resume listed Phi Beta Kappa at Northwestern. Law degree from the University of Chicago. Who's Who of American Women. A quarter-century in human resource management, including a 14-year stint at the Justice Department in Washington. Her letters of reference glowed. "A pro-active, technically proficient motivator," one reference wrote of Lauren A. Evans. Quick! Hire this woman. That's just what senior managers at Personnel Data Systems Inc. of Plymouth Meeting did in early 1991.

George C. Foust Jr., 83, a retired consultant who pursued many interests in retirement, died June 29 at his Huntingdon Valley home. Mr. Foust was born in Philadelphia. He graduated in 1931 from Germantown Friends School and in 1935 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he played varsity soccer and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa honor society and Alpha Chi Rho fraternity. He served in the Army during World War II in South America, the Panama Canal Zone, and in the intelligence unit at the Pentagon.

H. Merle Mulloy, 95, an attorney and former vice president and general counsel for the Reading Co., died Wednesday at the Crosslands in Kennett Square. Mr. Mulloy worked for the railroad for 50 years. He became vice president and general counsel in 1958 and retired in 1967. He also served on the board of directors of the former Central Railroad Co. of New Jersey, the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines and the Central Penn National Bank. Mr. Mulloy was born and raised in Philadelphia and moved to Delaware County in 1928.

Elizabeth Wriggins Conger, 99, who had been an owner of women's specialty stores in the region, died of complications from a head injury on Sunday, Jan. 2, at the Health Center of the Pine Run retirement community in Doylestown Township, where she had resided for the last seven years. Born in Philadelphia, Mrs. Conger graduated from Germantown Friends School in 1929. She earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1933 from Wellesley College, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Kappa Chi. From 1933 until she married in 1935, she worked for the Beneficial Life Insurance Co. in Philadelphia as an actuary.

Joanne Barnes Jackson, 68, a regional planner, died of hypertensive cardiovascular disease Friday, Oct. 29, at her home in the Cedar Park neighborhood of West Philadelphia. Mrs. Jackson was the former executive director of the Advocate Community Development Corp., at 18th and Diamond Streets in North Philadelphia. The agency helped restore housing for low- and moderate-income households in the Diamond Street Historic District and tried to preserve the neighborhood's heritage. "We have the largest, richest collection of Victorian buildings in Philadelphia," she told an Inquirer interviewer in 2003, "and right now they are lost from public consciousness.

One doesn't sell one's soul lightly. Unless one is truly committed to a cause that will improve the lives of needy people. Speaking metaphorically, of course, Joanne Barnes Jackson, contemplating the incomplete work her organization was doing to rehab a chunk of North Philadelphia in 2001 and bring in commercial development, told Daily News columnist Elmer Smith: "I'd sell my soul for a Wawa. But I've sold it so many times now. " That kind of commitment and dedication marked the life of Joanne Jackson as she worked for years to restore the many blocks of crumbling homes in her native city that may have seemed lost to decay and indifference.

From every indication, James Kozachek is a perfectly rational, sensible guy. A lawyer with the firm Flaster Greenberg in its Trenton office, he specializes in construction, real estate, and environmental law, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa when he attended Rutgers University. So it seems out of character that Kozachek would buy a crumbling old 7,000-square-foot country estate with 11 bedrooms in Mansfield Township, Burlington County, while he was a bachelor, or that he would devote most of his spare time over the next several years restoring it. It was, and still is, a Herculean project, which included ridding the place of the uninvited guests he found there: an assortment of winged things and other animals.

Jane Mills Glick, 65, of Swarthmore, a biochemist, died Sunday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania of head trauma from a fall in her home. From 2002 until she retired in May 2008, Dr. Glick was faculty administrator of the Cell and Molecular Biology (CAMB) graduate program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Previously, she was director of education in the gene-therapy program at Penn for eight years, and also associate professor in cell and molecular biology.

Estelle F. Ingenito, 88, of Havertown, an epidemiologist and biochemist, died of a heart attack Friday at Bryn Mawr Hospital. For more than 10 years, until 1998, Dr. Ingenito was an epidemiologist and clinical laboratory director at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital. She was also regional coordinator for Laboratory Corp. of America. Dr. Ingenito had been an epidemiologist and infection control officer at Metropolitan Hospital, a research scientist for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, a member of the Governor's Council on Drug and Alcohol Abuse, and a lecturer and research fellow at the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Army Reserve Capt. Earl Matthews, a North Philadelphia native on leave from active duty in Iraq, will talk tomorrow to the City Wide Improvement and Planning Agency program for at-risk youth. He will talk about setting goals, not forgetting where you come from, and giving back to the community. I spoke with Matthews over the weekend at his family home at 27th Street and Montgomery Avenue in North Central Philadelphia. He was home for the funeral of his cousin Allen, 30, who died last week from complications of sickle-cell anemia.

The head of the newly opened National Constitution Center is quitting at the end of this year to possibly make a run for the 13th Congressional District. Joseph M. Torsella, who performed much of the fund-raising and other heavy lifting that got the $140 million building open July Fourth, announced yesterday that he plans to step down when his contract ends in December. Torsella, 39, a Democrat who lives in Flourtown, said he is considering joining the crowded group of candidates running for the 13th District seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Joe Hoeffel.

The pip-squeak wasn't budging. Older boys had just ordered the tiny 11-year-old home, telling her that, besides the fact that she was a girl, she was too little to play basketball with them. Fuming, she returned a few minutes later. She marched across the street with a basketball that her grandmother had bought for her birthday and plopped down in the middle of the court. Small but stubborn, she staged a protest until she was included. Now 5-foot-4 and 16 years old, junior Ashley Morris of Central High still struts onto courts with conviction.

This week began with news about the deaths of two individuals I have known for a long time: one a trailblazing physician, Maurice C. Clifford; the other a grassroots community activist, Edwina A Baker. Clifford, 82, died of a heart attack, and Baker, 66, died of cancer. They were different in many ways. She preferred the vernacular, and he would at times quote Shakespeare. Both were mainstays in the city's African American community. But it has become increasingly evident - in the eulogies at the ceremonies, and in the sympathy and praise from many in the city's political and civic leadership - that in their separate and different ways, they affected the lives of people across racial lines.