Psychologist

Irving R. Leshner, 83, a psychologist and big-band musician who composed the Villanova University fight song more than 50 years ago, died Wednesday at St. Agnes Hospital. Mr. Leshner, who lived in Ardmore, was born in West Philadelphia and graduated from Overbrook High School and Temple University. He received his master's and doctoral degrees in psychology from Temple. He was a psychologist for 30 years at Jewish Employment Vocational Services in Center City, counseling people entering the work force.

A defense psychologist told a Bucks County judge yesterday that Donald A. Traub was seriously mentally disturbed and angry when he shot and killed Karen Lee Hordis at random last August in a Warminster supermarket parking lot. "He was under an extreme emotional disturbance at the time of the shooting," said Gerald Cooke, a forensic psychologist from Plymouth Meeting. Cooke, the former chief forensic psychologist at Norristown State Hospital, testified in Traub's behalf in the penalty phase of the capital case.

Bernice L. Rosman, 69, of Philadelphia, a psychologist who performed key research in the field of family therapy and served on the staff of the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center, died Monday of complications associated with Alzheimer's disease at Stapeley Hall, a retirement home in the city's Germantown section. She had been a longtime resident of the Fitler Square section of the city. From 1972 until she retired in 1994 because of the onset of Alzheimer's, Dr. Rosman served in a number of positions at the center, including director of research and training, chief psychologist, and director of education.

Each year when the Overbrook and West Philadelphia basketball teams met in their classic rivalry, the wives of the two coaches watched side by side. Marla Levin, wife of Overbrook coach Mark "Max" Levin, ardently cheered the action, as she did at countless other Overbrook games. "They (the two wives) would be ashy and white," West Philadelphia coach Joe Goldenberg recalled yesterday, describing the tension that gripped Marla Levin and Claire Goldenberg during the traditional clash.

Neal Daniels, 86, one of the first psychologists to treat Vietnam veterans for posttraumatic stress disorder and a passionate antiwar activist, died at his West Philadelphia home Thursday of kidney failure. A member of the Philadelphia chapter of Veterans For Peace, Dr. Daniels hosted meetings at his home, and helped organize demonstrations in Philadelphia and Washington against the Vietnam and Iraq Wars. He last marched in 2004. "His strength was in his quiet wisdom. He would not shout others down.

It was almost a routine on Saturday nights, Yussie Weiss in his home full of family and friends, talking thoughtfully or injecting an unexpected bit of humor or giving directions to those cooking dinner in the kitchen. Even during the quiet times, the evenings when people would gather around the VCR and take in an old Clint Eastwood movie, it seemed to those who knew him that the room was fuller when Dr. Weiss was in it. Dr. Weiss had a deeply felt presence, a remarkable way of touching the people he spent his time with, relatives and friends said.

One morning in the life of the Phillies on an open date on the road: The mimeographed itinerary handed out by traveling secretary Eddie Ferenz says that the bus for the off-day workout at Three Rivers Stadium will depart the hotel at 9:30 a.m. That's frightfully early, considering that it's less than 12 hours since the Phillies concluded a 5-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates the previous evening. Still, by the time the bus arrives, most of the players are already in the visitors' clubhouse.

An obsessive belief that he was the victim of unfairness led a Northeast Philadelphia man to kill his estranged wife and wound his 6-year-old daughter in a barrage of bullets from a semiautomatic pistol, a psychologist testified yesterday. Jonathan Margoles, 36, the slightly built, balding and bespectacled defendant, listened impassively as psychologist Gerald Cooke, a defense witness at Margoles' murder trial, described him as a "borderline personality with an obsessive view of the injustices he believed had been done to him by his wife.

Julie Bernard O'Malley, 67, of Wyndmoor, a clinical psychologist, drowned Saturday, July 17, in Avalon, N.J. Dr. O'Malley, who was a strong swimmer, had gone for a swim in the early evening after lifeguards left the beach, said her sister, Olivia Bernard. Since 1992, Dr. O'Malley had had a practice in Chestnut Hill. She was a counselor at the Child Study Institute at Bryn Mawr College from 1984 to 1988 and then a staff psychologist at the Washington Square Institute in New York City for four years.

On stage at the Academy of Music last week, 12-year-old Juliette Coche wore a pearl-and-rhinestone tiara as she danced the lead role of Marie in the Pennsylvania Ballet's production of The Nutcracker. In the orchestra, her father, Erich Coche, sat with tears in his eyes. He was dying of cancer, but Dr. Coche had no intention of missing his daughter's performance. "It was a very poignant experience," said his wife, Judith Milner Coche. "He took great pride in her accomplishments.