DEATHS


Dr. Mark Morgan of Ob/Gyn, Cited Among 'Best Doctors' in National Polls

Dr. Mark Allen Morgan, 41, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of Maternal and Fetal Medicine and Obstetrics at HUP, died on Easter Sunday, April 4, after a yearlong battle with pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Morgan graduated magna cum laude from the Southern Nazerene University in Bethany, Oklahoma, in 1979, and earned his M.D. in 1983 from the University of Oklahoma. His residency in obstetrics and gynecology and his postgraduate studies under a fellowship in maternal-fetal medicine were both done at Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City.

He served in various administrative and academic capacities at Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center from 1989 to 1991, and at University of California/Irvine Medical Center until 1994.

Joining Penn in 1994 as an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, he was also named director of Obstetrics and Maternal-Fetal Medicine on his arrival. He became a full professor in 1998 and was one of the leaders in the design and construction of the new Labor & Delivery unit and Intensive Care Nursery (ICN) on the seventh floor of the Ravdin Building which opened last May (Almanac May 5, 1998) as a groundbreaking combination of state-of-the art medical and surgical facilities for those facing high-risk births, and comfort features such as private jacuzzis, skyline views and family waiting areas.

Dr. Morgan was listed in The Best Doctors in America (1992-1994) while he was at Irvine, and was named in Good Housekeeping's "401 Best Doctors for Women" after joining Penn. He also received the Faculty Teaching Award from the residents department at the completion of his first year at Penn.

Dr. Morgan was a prolific contributor to the literature in both clinical and basic aspects of high-risk obstetrics. He was also a reviewer for the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Mark was clearly a rising star in MFM," remembers Dr. Michael T. Mennuti, chair of Ob/Gyn at HUP. "However, in spite of his youth," Dr. Mennuti says, "I believe that his most lasting legacy is a large group of residents and MFM fellows from Oklahoma, Irvine and Penn for whom he was a primary mentor and role model."

He is survived by his wife, Jaleen Scharn Morgan, and their two children, Robert W. and Jamie Lynn; his parents, Wayne T. and Della Goodhue Morgan; and a sister.

Contributions in Dr. Morgan's memory can be made to Science Department/Catalysts, Southern Nazerene University, 5629 NW 39th Expressway, Bethany, OK 73008.

Dr. Neda Westlake, a Librarian Who Made Literary Headlines

Dr. Neda McFadden Westlake, the distinguished librarian of 35 years at Penn whose work almost 20 years ago led to a renewed interest in Theodore Dreiser that continues today, died on April 7 at the age of 84.

A 1939 alumna of Wheaton College, Dr. Westlake earned her Ph.D. in American civilization at Penn in 1950 with an edition of Richard Penn Smith's Caius Marius: A Tragedy, later published by the Penn Press (1968).

She joined Van Pelt Library in 1949 as assistant to the curator of rare books. She became assistant curator in 1955 and curator in 1960; and in 1962 she was named Librarian of the Rare Book Division (later to become Special Collections, and now the Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Van Pelt Library). In add-ition to writing numerous articles and exhibition catalogs, she was generous with her time and energy in helping Penn faculty, staff and students explore the Library's collections. In collaboration with Professor Otto E. Albrecht, she published in 1981 a catalog of the Marian Anderson Collection at Penn. Another of her publications, now something of a rare book itself, is a 1974 facsimile edition of the Trustees' minutes of 1749-1768, in which the workings of the Academy and College that became Penn are chronicled in the handwriting of the day.

But as her longtime colleague Dr. Daniel Traister recalls,

"Her most important scholarly work, she might have thought, concerned Theodore Dreiser, and its summit was the work she contributed to editing Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie from manuscript and typescript remains of the novel. "This 1981 edition 'restored' some 40,000 words to the book," Dr. Traister continues. "First published in 1900, Sister Carrie is often seen as a book that helped open twentieth-century American fiction to a more realistic depiction of American life, a realism that became one of the constituents of literary modernism. The texts preserved in the manuscripts and typescripts are, however, very different from the text Doubleday published in 1900. The revelation of these differences, when this new edition was published, made front-page news in The New York Times. American Libraries also noted its publication (May 1981). Even People ran an article about it, with a headline Neda loved: Librarian Neda Westlake Exhumes a Sexier 'Sister Carrie' from Dreiser's Uncensored Papers (July 6, 1981).

" 'I think I would have liked Dreiser because he had a general appeal to women,' the People article quotes her as saying. 'He was more interested in women-their lives and reactions-than in men.'

"So widely recognized was the significance of this work that its success initiated a project intended to re-edit more of Dreiser's works than Sister Carrie alone. New editions of his works, based on close examination of the extensive manuscript and other archival materials preserved primarily at Penn as one of its most distinguished collections, would focus new attention on Dreiser. They would also permit a far more faithful representation of what could be ascertained of the authorial intentions of this major figure in American twentieth-century literature than any of his books, extensively cut and altered prior to their original publication, currently permitted."

The University of Pennsylvania Press Edition of the Works of Theodore Dreiser remains an ongoing project at the Press and the Library, and Dr. Westlake continued as an active member of the editorial board well into her retirement, which took place in 1984.

Long widowed, Dr. Westlake leaves no immediate survivors. A memorial service is planned, probably for early June, at Normandy Farms Estates in Blue Bell PA, where she had lived in retirement.

Dr. Richard Woods, Accounting

Dr. Richard Seavey Woods, emeritus professor and former chair of accounting in the Wharton School, died at his home in Lancaster on March 29. He was 80 years old.

Dr. Woods earned a B.A. in English from the University of Rochester and an M.B.A. and Ph.D. in accounting from the Wharton School. Appointed to the faculty as an instructor in 1947, he became assistant professor in 1952, associate professor in 1958, and full professor in 1964-a year after he had taken the post of departmental chair, where he served until 1969. He became an emeritus professor in 1987.

A lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he was a communications officer on the USS Long in the Pacific Theater.

He is survived by his wife, Dorothy, two daughters, Catherine Wareham and Molly Moyle, two sons, David and Michael, his brother, Charles, and 13 grandchildren.


Almanac, Vol. 45, No. 28, April 13, 1999

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