LAFF Society

NEWSLETTER

In Memoriam, Winter 2015

 

Richard A. Hopkins, who was Director of Fixed Income Investment at the Foundation when he retired in 1995 after working for more than 30 years in the treasurer’s office, died in August at his home in 
Rowayton, Conn. He was 84.
 
For many years he oversaw the Foundation’s dealing in bonds, including those purchased in private placements, which sometimes had to be renegotiated. He was responsible primarily for credit analysis.
 
“The Foundation just didn’t rely on the rating agencies,” recalled Jerry Anderson, who, while in both the general counsel’s and the treasurer’s offices, worked with him.
 
“It frequently fell to me, as house counsel for all endowment management matters, to take to Dick some seemingly innocuous request for some modification of a private placement bond or indenture.
 
“Always Dick would want to know what we were going to get in return for our approval of the requested change. He was very tough about that, but he always prevailed.”
 
Mr. Hopkins was graduated from Amherst College in 1951 and then served in the Navy, retiring in 1955 with the rank of Lt(jg). He then earned a master’s degree in business administration from the Wharton Graduate School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1957.
 
He was a member of the board of directors of the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ and served the church nationally as a member of its Board for Homeland Ministries, the Pension Board and the United Church Foundation.
 
Survivors include his wife of 52 years, Heather S. Hopkins, five children, seven grandchildren, and a brother.  
 
Earl F. Cheit, a former program advisor to the Foundation in higher education who while a professor at the University of California at Berkeley wrote what The New York Times called “a sobering, influential report saying that two-thirds of the colleges and universities in the United States were in or near grave financial difficulty” died August 2 at the age of 87. 
 
He worked for Ford for 20 years, from 1962 until 1982, and also was a senior 
advisor on Asia Pacific Affairs for The Asia Foundation and associate director of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.
 
Dr. Cheit’s prescient book, “The New Depression in Higher Education”, which was sponsored by the Carnegie commission, found that 70 per cent of American institutions of higher learning were either in financial difficulty or “headed for trouble”.
 
He said college costs were rising faster than income, and while the universities needed to cut costs and raise tuition, they also needed more funds from the Federal and state governments to prosper. A two-year follow-up study said the institutions still were “living on borrowed time”.
 
Both reports shed light on financial difficulties that continue to plague colleges and universities as student costs rise, state legislatures cut funding for public institutions, full-time professors are let go and replaced by adjuncts, facilities have been closed and online courses continue to be introduced to reach more students more cheaply.  
 
Dr. Cheit earned undergraduate and law degrees and a doctorate in economics from the University of Minnesota. He taught at St. Louis University in the 1950s and then joined Berkeley, where he taught at and later became director of its Institute of Industrial Relations. He was twice dean of Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and later became the campus’s executive chancellor.
 
When the free speech protest erupted on the campus in 1964 he was elected to an emergency committee of the academic senate to deal with the growing movement. He attributed the protest to “under-administration”, and said there was not enough money to enable student and faculty voices to be heard.
 
Dr. Cheit is survived by his wife of 63 years, the former June Doris Andrews, two daughters and two sons, and three grandchildren. 
 
Deborah Geithner, wife of Peter Geithner, a former president of The LAFF Society, died August 12 at her home in Orleans, Mass., from pancreatic cancer. She was 76.
 
During most of their 54 years of marriage Peter worked in the Foundation’s international division and Deborah was with him in postings in Zambia, Zimbabwe, India, Thailand and China.  
 
She was described by family and friends as a “force of nature”, a teacher and pianist who loved Chopin and founded and played with the Cove Chamber Players of Cape Cod. She also had performed at the Weil Recital Hall in New York City.
 
In addition to her husband she is survived by two sons and a daughter, nine grandchildren and two brothers and a sister.
 
A video tribute to her by members of Ford’s China staff has been posted on the LAFF website.
 
David T. McDonald, 81, who had worked for the Foundation for 20 years in the comptroller’s office in New York and abroad until he resigned in 1985 as its Risk Manager, died November 13 at his home in Richmond, Va.
 
Mr. McDonald joined Ford in 1966 as a senior accountant in the comptroller’s office and two years later went to Beirut as the Overseas Accounting Advisor for the Middle East and Africa office.
 
He returned to New York in 1971 to be the Foundation’s accounting advisor, then received a series of promotions over the next several years, first as Assistant Director of Taxes and Insurance, then in 1974 as Assistant to the Comptroller and Manager of Taxes and Insurance and, in 1977, as Director of Taxes and Insurance, which later was changed to Risk Manager.  
 
He is survived by his wife, Janice, two sons and five grandchildren.
 
Ruth Neumann, who had worked in the Office of Reports, now the Office of Communications, as a graphics specialist until her retirement in 1985, died October 15.
 
Ms. Neumann joined the Office of Reports in 1977 as a production and design assistant and was promoted to administrative assistant two years later. She became the assistant administrative officer in 1981 and then manager of graphics a year later, a position she held until her retirement.
She was also the “tireless graphics editor” of the first several issues of this newsletter, said Richard Magat, co-founder of The LAFF Society, one of its editors for many years and her boss in the Office of Reports.
 
Ursula Kreutzer, 90, who had worked primarily in the Office of Reports until her retirement in 1989, died last March.
 
She began work at the Foundation in 1977 as a part-time secretary in the library until she went to work as a secretary in the Office of Reports a year later. She became a staff assistant and then was promoted to senior staff assistant in 1979.

 

 

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