Edwin Curmie Price Jr.
, an Ohio University alumnus and the University s first Black faculty member, passed away on April 23.
The history and status of Black Americans at Ohio University, published in 1974, notes the hiring of O.U. s first black faculty member, E. Curmie Price, in the English Department in 1963. Price earned a Master of Arts degree in literature from OHIO in 1964. He taught first-year writing courses then labeled ENG 100.
“He may have taught the works of Shakespeare and Milton, yet his gift was to understand Baldwin and Ellison. The birth of our friendship was in Athens the same day President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, alumnus
MY EDMONDS NEWS Posted: February 11, 2021
Marilyn Gerspacher
Marilyn Amelia Gerspacher passed away on February 7th 2021 at Providence Hospital in Everett, WA from cancer. She was born on November 23rd 1938 in Seattle, WA to August and Mary Ladwig.
She was raised and attended school in Seattle and was an active member of her girl scout troop throughout her youth. Upon graduating from Roosevelt High School, she attended Western Washington State College (now University) and earned her B.A. in Elementary Education in 1961. While attending Western, she met Patrick Gerspacher and they married in 1961. Marilyn taught in the Highline and Edmonds school districts before she and Pat started a family. She was a Cub Scout Den Mother and all her sons became Eagle Scouts. She was also active in supporting them in their athletic and academic endeavors.
Sam Herman was a multi-talented artist whose work with glass, together with his influence as a teacher, freed that medium from the confines of the factory and enabled the nascent studio glass movement to flourish internationally in the 1960s and 1970s.
The combined development of a suitable glass formula and the “small furnace” first demonstrated by the studio glass pioneer Harvey Littleton at Toledo Museum of Art in 1962 allowed artists to work directly in the mercurial medium of hot, molten glass, where before they might typically have passed drawn designs to professional glassmakers, restricting their creativity. Herman studied with Littleton, and with the sculptor Leo Steppat, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he seized the opportunity, as one of Littleton’s first students, to develop studio glass techniques, and received a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture and Glass in 1965. He then won a Fulbright Scholarship to study cold-working glass techniques with Helen M
Martha “Marty” McLaren, a past West Seattle/South Park representative on the
Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors, has died. Ms. McLaren, a Puget Ridge resident, was 76 years old. She was a longtime educator and community advocate, but her highest-profile role was that of board member. She won election in 2011 by unseating incumbent
Steve Sundquist and then four years later was unseated herself by current board member
Leslie Harris. We talked with Ms. McLaren after her election in 2011; she spoke of her teaching career following her involvement with advocacy as a PTA leader while her children were in school. More details on her life are in her obituary, which we’ve just received: