Social Work

They were a tough crew, these 40 boys from 5 to 18 years of age - borderline delinquents from the inner city who liked to roughhouse, who desperately needed someone to model their lives after. That was Jim Greenwood's job in the early 1970s. A head houseparent at the Woods Schools in Langhorne, he had to keep street kids with severe emotional problems in line and give them hope. Sometimes, of course, he just had to get out of the way, like the time a well-muscled youth loosened his teeth with a karate kick to the chops.

In high school, everyone could see Rebecca Dewar's challenges. A drunken-driving accident at age 7 left her quadriplegic, able to move only her mouth, chin and eyelids. Her wheelchair marked her as different, but she said it also let her travel through various high school cliques. "I didn't really fall into that peer pressure, and it didn't bother me. I could be friends with anybody," Dewar said. As a peer counselor at Interboro High School, she would talk to students about their problems, including having suicidal thoughts and pressure to have sex. "A few of the worst kids in my school - or so they were called - would really open up to me. " Now 26, Dewar wants to spend her working life helping people with their problems.

The subject is Housekeeping 101. Teacher Rita McGuane stands at the front of the class, adjusting an overhead projector slide while four adults watch. She starts with some fundamentals. "After you finish doing the dishes, wipe down the countertops," she says. "Trash should be collected every day. " This is the Chester County Department of Probation, where enforcing a criminal court sentence can sometimes seem like social work. Probation officers monitor convicted criminals once they get out of jail or are sentenced to supervision instead of jail.

Louise Shoemaker, 87, of Philadelphia, retired dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania and a nationally known social-work innovator, died Tuesday, March 19, of a ruptured aorta at Lankenau Hospital. She had been hospitalized briefly due to mobility problems. For 29 years ending with her retirement as professor emerita in 1994, Dr. Shoemaker was a recognized leader in the academic and professional development of social work at Penn. She started as an assistant professor and rose to professor, acting dean, and then dean, starting in 1973.

RAMONA KATHERINE Jonas was the ideal aunt. Every holiday she would show up at the homes of her numerous nieces and nephews with bags of presents. She gave one nephew a car when he started college. And she was always there cheering them on when they played sports. As a fine athlete in her youth, she also acted as an unofficial coach, especially in tennis, to help her nieces and nephews excel at their games. Ramona Jonas, a Native American and member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts and a retired program specialist at the Elwyn Institute in Delaware County, died Monday.

Cathryn Coate most certainly is not a cheerleader for the commercial real estate business, describing it as "very competitive, very cutthroat, real nasty. " Her initial impressions of the industry's brokers? "Sort of an oily salesman," was one way she put it in an interview last week. Another was: "Manipulative. " So it was a stunner to many who knew her when Coate became a commercial real estate broker 14 years ago. "I don't think anyone could have imagined this is what she would do," said Diane Dalto, a consultant to the arts community, which Coate was influential in getting Ed Rendell to embrace when he was mayor.

The typical day at Camp Sequoia on the Hill School campus in Pottstown is notable for what is absent. There are no TVs or video games that lead some children to huddle by themselves in corners. There are no cellphones or laptops to take them away from their peers. Instead, the children are attending the experimental overnight camp to learn confidence and to improve their social skills - all in an atmosphere of summer fun. "It's good for campers who need help with building independence or [overcoming]

Joan Bonner Conway, 88, of Haverford, retired director of the department of social work at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, died of a blood clot Saturday at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood. Dr. Conway began her career during World War II as a caseworker in military hospitals, including Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington and the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia. After the war, she was a caseworker in hospitals in the Philadelphia area. She shared memories of those early years with an Inquirer reporter in 1998.

Eudice Tontak Glassberg, 63, a sensitive, engaging professor of social work at Temple University who put her beliefs to practice, died Tuesday at her home in Springfield, Delaware County. Mrs. Glassberg started at Temple at a time when its School of Social Administration was just being created. During her 20 years on the faculty, she became known not only as an outstanding teacher, but also as a respected administrator. "It's really rare that you find her combination of excellence in practice and in policy issues," said Temple professor Willard Richan.

Tessie Bregman Okin, 89, an emeritus professor of social administration at Temple University, died of Alzheimer's disease last Sunday at the Quadrangle, the retirement community in Haverford where she lived. Born in Philadelphia, she was the salutatorian for the Class of 1936 at South Philadelphia High School, which inducted her into its Cultural Hall of Fame in 1977. Within five years of her high school graduation, her daughter Judy Wertheimer said, Mrs. Okin had earned both a bachelor's degree in education and a master's in social work at Temple.