October 23, 2018

Obituaries 10/24/18

Harrison Jerome Uhl Jr.

Harrison Jerome Uhl Jr., 88, of Princeton, died on October 3, at Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center.

Born in Elizabeth, N.J., on November 10, 1929, “Jerry” was the only child of Harrison J. Uhl and Elizabeth Reed Buchanan. He attended The Pingry School and Princeton University, where he graduated in 1952 with a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture.

After graduating from Princeton, he married Palmer Beverley of Millwood, Va., whom he had met several years before on a double date in Westport, N.Y. They moved together to Pittsburgh, Pa., where he attended Carnegie Tech and graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1954.

After college, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He attended Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, served in the Corps of Engineers, and was honorably discharged as a First Lieutenant.

In 1957, he returned to Princeton, N.J., to work for a local architect he had met while attending school. He settled in the Port Mercer neighborhood along the D&R Canal, where he lived until his death.

In 1962, he became a partner in a new firm named Collins Uhl Hoisington, Architects and Engineers. Early on, the new firm made a name for itself by winning a design competition for the NJ Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, N.Y.

Over the years, the firm grew and by the mid 1970s, it was taking on international projects. Eventually, the name was changed to CUH2A to avoid additional name changes each time partners joined or left the firm. Jerry was the managing partner for a number of years before his retirement at the end of 1987.

Jerry was an outdoorsman, a talented gardener, a builder of homes and chicken coops, and a soulful guitar player. After retirement, he and Palmer spent half of the year in the Adirondacks, in Westport, N.Y. on Lake Champlain, where they enjoyed wonderful friendships, a home on the lake, a big vegetable garden, and an apple and peach orchard. The other half of the year they would return to Princeton, where he took up wood carving and created a number of beautiful birds.

He is predeceased by his wife, Palmer; and survived by his children, Harrison J. Uhl III, Palmer B. Uhl, and William B. Uhl; daughter-in-law, Dorinda Uhl; and by his grandson, William B. Uhl Jr.

A memorial service will be held at Trinity Church, 33 Mercer Street, Princeton, N.J., on November 10th at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to The North Country SPCA, PO Box 55, Elizabethtown, N.Y. 12932, or the World Wildlife Fund.

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Katharine Bretnall

February 5, 1920 – October 5, 2018

Katharine Bretnall, a longtime resident of Princeton, New Jersey, passed away on October 5, 2018 at Pennswood Village, Newtown, Pennsylvania. She was 98 years old. She was the great-granddaughter of the Reverend George Hale, Pastor of the Pennington, New Jersey Presbyterian Church from 1839 to 1869.

During her nearly half-century as a Princeton resident, Katharine became known throughout the community as a tireless and respected journalist chronicling the historic, social, and political events throughout the Princeton area during her 32 years as a reporter and assistant editor of Town Topics, one of Princeton two weekly newspapers.

She began her career at Town Topics in 1952 writing a column titled It’s New to Us, which surveyed newly arrived merchandise in the stores along Nassau Street. Her role quickly expanded to reporting duties in which she covered events in and around Princeton. She regularly attended, and reported on, meetings of both the Princeton Borough Council and the Princeton Township Committee (at the time, Princeton was two separate communities), earning the respect of mayors, councilmen, and committeemen for her honest, straightforward, and dispassionate reporting. Many of the government leaders in both communities became her lifelong friends. She also covered and reported on School Board Meetings and earned the same respect from School Board members that she did from Borough Council and Township Committee.

Her reporting, however, was not limited to governments and school boards. She reported on a wide range of activities throughout the Princeton area, and as a devotee of the theater (she was a passionate fan of Shakespeare) wrote many Town Topics reviews of productions at McCarter Theater, Theater Intime, and other venues.

She worked closely with the founders of Town Topics, Dan D. Coyle and Donald C. Stuart, rising to the level of Assistant Editor under Donald Stuart and, following Stuart’s death, Stuart’s son, Donald (Jeb) Stuart, Jr. She retired from Town Topics in 1984, yet her legacy within the community continued. Thirteen years later a longtime resident of Princeton, in a letter to the editor of Town Topics, lauded her for helping to “…establish a standard for reliable, accurate, and interesting reporting.”

Her work as a reporter gave her an intense interest in community affairs to which she devoted much time and energy following her retirement. She served as a Board Member of both the Family Service Agency of Princeton and the Friends of the Princeton Public Library. She served as both Secretary and President of the Mercer Street Friends Center in Trenton and was President of Princeton Community Housing.

In 1993 she received the coveted Gerard B. Lambert Award, the highest honor the United Way – Princeton Area Communities can present to a community volunteer. The Award was established in 1954 to honor Gerard Lambert, a noted benefactor of the Princeton community.

During her retirement she traveled throughout the world; she was conversant in Spanish and spent a significant portion of her travels in Spanish-speaking countries.

In 1995 she moved to Pennswood Village, a retirement community in Newtown (Bucks County), Pennsylvania not far from Princeton, where she spent the remainder of her life, all the while maintaining her ties to Princeton friends.

Katharine Bretnall was born in Denver, Colorado, on February 5, 1920, the only child of Joseph and Elizabeth Hale Hanly. Following graduation from Denver’s East High School, she enrolled in New York’s Barnard College, earning her Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1942. She then enrolled in the Columbia University School of Journalism from which she earned her Master of Science Degree in 1943, then worked at the Foreign News Desk of the United Press in New York in 1943 and 1944.

In 1943 she married William (Bill) Bretnall of Brooklyn, New York. Following her husband’s discharge from the Army in late 1945 and the subsequent completion of his studies at Columbia University, the couple moved to Princeton where Bill joined Educational Testing Service (which at the time was part of the College Entrance Examination Board). He served ETS in a variety of executive positions, including Director of Test Administration, until his untimely death in 1981.

Katharine Bretnall is survived by her son, Bill Bretnall of Avon Lake (Cleveland), Ohio; her daughter, Anne Bretnall Steen of Fenton (St. Louis), Missouri; three grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.  Those wishing to honor her memory are invited to make contributions to Mercer Street Friends Center, 151 Mercer Street, Trenton, New Jersey 08611.

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Wen Fong

Wen Fong, a renowned art historian and Princeton University alumnus who spent more than four decades on the Princeton faculty, died of leukemia on October 3 in Princeton, New Jersey. Fong was the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Art History, Emeritus, and professor of art and archaeology, emeritus. He was 88.

Fong was born in Shanghai in 1930, and received a classical Chinese education, including training as a calligrapher. In 1948 he came to the United States to study physics at Princeton, but soon changed his major to European history, graduating in the Class of 1951. He continued at Princeton as a graduate student in the Department of Art and Archaeology, focusing on medieval art history before earning a Ph.D. in 1958 in Chinese art history. He joined Princeton’s faculty in 1954 as an instructor, was named professor in 1967, and the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Art History in 1971. He transferred to emeritus status in 1999.

“Wen Fong was a giant in the field of Chinese art history, and his long tenure at Princeton ensured our department’s significance in the field,” said Michael Koortbojian, the M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Art and Archaeology and department chair. “Generations of students benefited from his mentoring at Princeton, and the discipline as a whole is all the richer for his teaching, his scholarship, and his example.”

Fong was instrumental in shaping the study of Asian art at Princeton, teaching graduate and undergraduate classes on Chinese art history, as well as medieval architecture. In 1959, he and the late Professor Frederick Mote, professor of East Asian studies, emeritus, established at Princeton the nation’s first Ph.D. program in Chinese art and archaeology, and shortly afterward expanded the program to include Japanese art and archaeology.

While chair of the department in the early 1970s, Fong established the history of photography and the history of pre-Columbian art as integral parts of the department’s program. As faculty curator of Asian art at the Princeton University Museum, Fong involved his graduate students in pathbreaking exhibitions and related publications. He helped to build the museum’s holdings in many fields, including the photography collection of the McAlpin family and outstanding holdings of Chinese art, most notably the John B. Elliott Collection of Chinese Calligraphy. He established Princeton’s Far Eastern Seminar Archives in 1958, which include more than 50,000 photographs of Chinese and Japanese paintings, as well as one of the world’s finest libraries of Asian art.

Concurrent with his contributions at Princeton, Fong served nearly 30 years — from 1971 to 2000 — as The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first consultative chairman of the Department of Asian Art. He often brought his students to The Met to view artwork from its collections.

In 1998, Fong received the College Art Association’s distinguished teaching award, and in 2013 the CAA honored him with a Distinguished Scholar Session at its annual meeting. In 2008, he was awarded an honorary degree from Harvard University. He was a member of the Academia Sinica in Taipei, the American Philosophical Society, the Chinese Art Society of America, and the College Art Association of America, among others.

After his retirement, Fong served as a professor in China at Tsinghua University in Beijing from 2004-7 and at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou from 2009-12.

Fong is survived by his wife, Constance; two sons, Laurence and Peter; a daughter, Serena and her husband, Philipp von Weitershausen; and two grandchildren, Landon and Matteo.

The Department of Art and Archaeology will hold a memorial service at 11 a.m. on April 13, 2019 in Princeton Chapel.

In lieu of flowers, donations could be made to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS.org).

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Esther Ebenhoe Jenkins

Esther Ebenhoe Jenkins died peacefully at 97 on Sept. 19, 2018.  She is survived by her daughter Hilarie Jenkins of New York and her niece Regina Hancock Vindiatis of Connecticut.

She is the daughter of Sara Melenzer and Andrew Ebenhoe, and is originally of Belle Vernon, PA. She attended Monessen High School where she graduated Valedictorian, then graduating Allegheny College, Meadville, PA. B.A. cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa with majors in English Literature and Drama.

Esther then married artist Paul Jenkins, and they lived in New York City and Paris, France.

Once divorced, Esther returned to New York City where she worked as a direct mail executive for the companies Reuben H. Donnelley, Random House, and Clairol.

Esther was one of the founding members of the successful Off-Off-Broadway group, Theater Practice, that performed original productions by Theo Barnes.

She relocated to Princeton, NJ in 1983. She worked for the environmental research firm Environ. She helped create the theatre group Princeton Rep Company, where she acted in principal roles.

Esther retired from Environ in 1999, living the rest of her days in Princeton happily reading as many books as she could.

Memorial services for Esther will be held at Trinity Episcopal Church at 33 Mercer Street, Princeton, NJ 08540 (609-924-2277) on November 3, 2018 at 1 p.m.

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Joseph Foster Studholme Jr.

Joseph Foster Studholme Jr. passed away peacefully on October 3, 2018, after a long illness. Born August 2, 1936 in Binghamton, NY, to Joseph F. Studholme Sr. and Donna (Hall) Studholme, Joe and his brother Peter grew up in Port Allegany, PA. He was a star student and athlete at Port Allegheny High School, where among other achievements he played on both sides of the line for the football team. He spent some of his school years with his family in Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia, where his father worked for Chicago Bridge and Iron. He attended Harvard and Columbia University, focusing on political science and making many lifelong friends.
In 1959 he married Anne Luning and after the birth of their first child, Joseph Bruns, in 1960, the family moved from New York City to Plainfield, NJ, where their second child, Hal Luning, was born in 1964, before finally settling in Locust, NJ, where Joe served on the vestry of All Saints’ Church. Joe worked at a variety of interesting jobs in New York City, including writing for MD magazine and analysis work for S&P, before beginning a long and successful banking career which continued through a number of senior positions with both national and international institutions. He was a member of the Bank Credit Associates of New York, taught a variety of training and introductory courses on credit analysis, and worked on behalf of NGOs overseas.

Joe was a widely-read student of American and World history, finance, and politics and, after retirement, settled in Princeton, New Jersey where he was an active auditor of courses at the University. A devoted husband, father, and grandfather, he was a constant presence in the lives of his Princeton grandchildren. 

Predeceased by his parents and his brother, Joe is survived by his wife, Anne; his sons, Joe and Hal; his granddaughter, Betsy; and his grandsons, Joey and William. Joe’s great heart and sense of humor, his intellectual curiosity and intelligence, wonderful stories, character, and unvarying kindness to his family, colleagues, and friends will be deeply missed.

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Dr. Peter J. Wojtowicz

Dr. Peter J. Wojtowicz of Princeton, NJ, went to his eternal rest with close family by his side on October 13, 2018. He was 87 years old.

Peter is survived by his children, Catherine Terroni (John) of Yardley, PA; Cynthia Bartlett (Edward) of Ft. Lauderdale, FL; and James Wojtowicz (Helen) of Crosswicks, NJ; his six grandchildren, Bart, John, James, Amy, Kelly, and Olivia; and his special longtime companion Patricia Scott of Cranbury, NJ.  He is preceded in death by his wife, Barbara McCluskey Wojtowicz and his brother David Wojtowicz.

Peter was born on September 22, 1931, in Elizabeth Port, NJ, to Joseph and Helen Wojtowicz. He lived his early life in Linden, NJ, where he enjoyed visiting the train yard with his father and brother, and crabbing with his Uncle Frank. He graduated from Rutgers University and then moved with his young wife to New Haven, CT, where he graduated from Yale University with a doctorate in Physics. Upon graduation, he was employed with RCA – David Sarnoff Research Lab in Princeton, NJ, where he was granted several patents. During this time, Peter fulfilled a lifelong dream of obtaining a private pilot’s license and spent many happy hours flying. He also enjoyed boating in the rivers and back bays of NJ with his wife and family. He retired from RCA 1992.

Peter was very active after retirement. He worked as a consultant and was able to have the time to pursue his love of traveling. He and Pat enjoyed many adventurous trips together by boat and rail including several to Alaska, their favorite destination. 

Peter will be remembered as a wonderful and caring father, grandfather, friend, traveler, and storyteller.

A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated on October 20 at the Church of St. Ann, 1253 Lawrenceville Road, Lawrenceville. Burial followed in Ewing Church Cemetery, Ewing

In lieu of flowers, donations in Peter’s memory to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia would be appreciated, as CHOP held special meaning for him. Arrangements are by the Wilson-Apple Funeral Home, 2560 Pennington Road, Pennington. Condolences are welcome at www.wilsonapple.com.