Obituaries

Wendell E. Dodge

Wendell E. Dodge, '58G, '67G, 74, of Pittsfield, N.H., a former adjunct associate professor in Forestry and Wildlife, died April 8 following an extended bout with cancer.

He served the University in 1970 and 1981 as an adjunct and had previously served between 1955 and 1969 as a department fellow in Forestry and Zoology.
A veteran of the U.S. Army Air Force, he worked as a supervisory research biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 30 years.

He wrote or co-wrote many scientific papers and manuals concerning wildlife and conservation, and he worked with a number of graduate students in Wildlife Management.

He leaves his wife, Polly Dodge; three children; and other family.
Memorial contributions may be made to the University of Massachusetts Wendell E. Dodge Scholarship Fund, c/o Lori Miner, Department of Natural Resources Conservation, Holdsworth Natural Resources Center.

Marjorie Merchant

Marjorie Merchant, 76, of Hadley, a retired professor of Home Economics, died May 4.

She served the University for 30 years before retiring in 1988. She created the consumer economics curriculum in her department and taught personal financial planning, as well as the legal rights of American consumers. She also was a Cooperative Extension consultant.

In 1988, the Home Economics division established a scholarship in her name.
She authored "The Price of Poverty in the Marketplace," "Consumer Education in the Economically Integrated Housing Community," and "A Computer-Assisted Instructional Program to Help Families Compare the Cost of Alternate Housing Purchase Decisions, Comprehensive Analysis" and many extension publications.

As director of a model consumer education program, she helped low-income housing residents of Holyoke, Chicopee and Springfield acquire home management techniques and consumer knowledge.

She edited and directed an oral history project for the American Council on Consumer Interests for 30 years, and served as president of the organization in 1976. In the 1960s, she helped to organize the Massachusetts Consumer Council and was on the consumer panel at the first White House conference on food and nutrition, at which she was named to a task force to fight hunger and malnutrition.

She held a master's degree in food and nutrition from Pennsylvania State University, where she also studied biochemistry. She spent several additional years doing graduate work in economic theory at Boston College.

Ida Blanche DePuy

Ida Blanche DePuy, 81, of Monterey County, Calif., a retired professor of Spanish and Portuguese, died April 24.

She served the University for 20 and a half years before retiring in 1985. She coordinated Language and Area Studies, and developed and directed the University's Summer Graduate Seminar in Madrid, Spain. She previously taught at Wellesley College, from where she had graduated in 1942.

After college she was commissioned by the Naval Reserve, where she served in communications intelligence for four years, reaching the rank of lieutenant.
She joined the International Telecommunications Union, a subsidiary of the United Nations, as a conference specialist - the only female executive in the union at that time.

After helping to establish a simultaneous interpretation system in the Maison des Congres in Geneva, she returned to school, receiving a master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh and a doctorate from Stanford University.
An authority on Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, she specialized in teaching 19th-century novels and the history of ideas.

After retiring, she served in the American Association of University Women and was a representative for the association's Coalition for Reproductive Rights. She also served on the Monterey County Commission on the Status of Women, and the Sylvia Panetta Scholarship Board at Monterey Peninsula College.