Appointed: As president and chief executive officer at Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream,
Robert Holland, Jr. '62, an experienced business consultant with a demonstrated commitment to social causes. The Associated Press said Holland “has spent his career working directly for struggling companies that he helped turn around or for consultants who performed the same tasks.” A Boston Globe profile said, “Holland's many supporters say he possesses the strategic thinking of a management consultant, the hands-on savvy of an entrepreneur, and the conscience of a social activist.”
Appointed: As assistant dean of students, Edgar Letriz '91, most recently assistant dean of admissions at the College of William and Mary. Letriz earned his bachelor's degree in modern languages and has a master's degree in French literature from the University of Wisconsin. He will work closely with student groups whose primary function is cultural awareness and with the College's Terms Abroad program.
Died: Codman Hislop '31, research professor of American civilization and author of the biography Eliphalet Nott, died February 26 at his home in Captiva Island, Fla. He was eighty-nine.
A native of Brooklyn, Professor Hislop earned his bachelor's degree in liberal arts and received an honorary doctor of letters degree from Union in 1972. He held a master's in American literature from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
As an undergraduate, he was a member of Sigma Phi fraternity, Concordiensis, Garnet, the English
Club, Mountebanks, the choir, Pi Delta Epsilon, and Sigma Phi Society. He was a winner of the Bailey Prize.
In addition to his biography on Nott, which the College plans to publish this year in an abridged form, he wrote The Mohawk and Albany: Dutch, English and American. His writings appeared in a number of scholarly journals, and he had several Union distinctions-in
1932, he discovered the original Ramee plans for the College in an attic in the geology laboratory; in 1942, he was the first Union professor to enter active service in World War II, eventually becoming a major in the Army Air Force; in 1945 he served as the College's Sesquicentennial Poet; and in 1968 he discovered a number of letters written by George Washington which became known as the “W. Wright Hawkes Collection of Revolutionary War Documents.”
His interests included New England and New York State history, American social history, American literature, and English literature. He was active in the Schenectady Civic Theater, playing
roles in a number of productions, and was a founder of the Friends of Union College Library.
Survivors include a stepdaughter, Margaret Hanson, of Atworth, N.H. His wife, Gertrude, died in 1970.
A memorial was held in Florida in April.
Died: Elma Hicks Martin, the wife of former President Harold C. Martin, died February 26 at St. Joseph's West Mesa Hospital in Albuquerque, N.M., after a brief illness. She was eighty-five.
Mrs. Martin graduated from Virginia State University and had a master's degree in English from the University of Michigan. She had been a teacher at Webster Springs (W.Va.) High School, Orange County Community College in Middletown, N.Y., and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She also was a tutor of English.
She was co-editor of a family magazine and published articles in West Virginia School Journal and Massachusetts Teacher.
She was a president of the St. George's Episcopal Church's Board of Women in Schenectady; a member of the Schenectady Public Library's
Friends of the library, for which she did a number of book reviews; and a board member of the Schenectady League of Women Voters, Freedom Forum, and
the Community Welfare Council.
In addition to her husband of fifty-five years, survivors include two sons, Thomas, of Jamaica Plains, Mass., and Joel, of Portland, Maine; two daughters, Ann Martin, of Albuquerque, and Rebecca Evarts, of Arlington, Mass.; and ten grandchildren.
Contributions may be made to the Board of Women, St. George's Episcopal Church, Schenectady.
Died: George R. Stibitz '27G, whose mathematical calculations and tinkering at the kitchen table led him to invent the first digital computer in 1940, died January 31 at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was ninety.
He earned his master's degree in physics at Union in 1927 and soon
joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories as a research mathematician.
In 1937, he combined some dry cell batteries with metal strips from a tobacco can, flashlight bulbs, and two telephone relays to create what he called a binary adder. The next year, he and a partner created the complex number calculator, a digital computer capable of solving problems faster than 100 people with desk calculators, and in 1940 he became the first person to establish a computer network when he instructed the complex number calculator in New York City to perform computations from a Teletype machine in Hanover.
He held more than thirty patents for inventions ranging from computer systems to a stereophonic organ. In 1983 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.