James Francis Mahon

James Francis Mahon, formerly of Haddonfield and Collingswood, N.J., who resided in Princeton with his son James from 2009 to 2010 died peacefully on July 16, 2014, in Manchester, N.H., where he moved in 2010.

Jim was married to his beloved Mary Brogan, on March 29, 1948 by the late Msgr. Leo Mahoney at St. Paul’s Church, Jersey City, N.J. Mary pre-deceased Jim on May 11, 2009. Jim is survived by their four devoted sons, James F. Jr. (the late Mairead), John Brogan, Patrick Andrews (Kathleen), and Joseph Carroll Mahon (Elizabeth Anderson); and by thirteen grandchildren, James F. III, Blathnaid, Deirdre, Denis, Fiona, Jessica Valverde (Luis), Rebecca Bartlett (Charles), Kimberly Pitre (Daniel), Carrie, Patrick Jr., Ciaran, Andrew, and Camilla; and by four great-grandchildren, Isabella and Bruce Bartlett, Madeline Pitre, and John Valverde; and many nieces and nephews. He was pre-deceased by his grandson David.

Jim was a veteran of World War II, having served as a First Lieutenant in the Army Air Force, as a navigator on B-17’s flying out of Foggia, Italy. Returning from his 13th bombing mission, over Frederickschafen, Germany, on August 3, 1944, his plane, damaged by German antiaircraft fire, crash-landed in Switzerland. On New Year’s Eve, 1944, Jim escaped from Swiss internment, crossed the Alps into France and with the help of the French resistance was ultimately reunited with U.S. forces. In a ceremony at the Pentagon on April 30, 2014, Jim was awarded a POW medal by the USAF Chief of Staff, General Mark A. Walsh, for his internment in the punishment camp at Wauwilermoos, Switzerland, as a result of Jim’s prior attempts to escape and rejoin U.S. forces.

James F. Mahon was born on August 22, 1922, in Hoboken, New Jersey, to James and Anna Mahon, who immigrated from Rathlee, Sligo, and Dualla, Co. Tipperary, Ireland. He was the youngest of four children. His sister Elizabeth, and brothers Patrick and John and their spouses, Bill Meehan, Elizabeth and Florence predeceased him. Jim was a graduate of St. Peters Prep and received a BS degree from St. Peters College, Jersey City, and an ME degree from Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, Jim was employed as an electrical sales engineer by Public Service Electric and Gas from the late 1940’s until he retired in 1987, working in their Camden, Bordentown, Trenton, and Mount Laurel offices for most of his career, and was a licensed N.J. professional engineer. Jim also taught a professional engineer course at Rutgers University Evening Division in Camden, He was a member of Rotary International, Haddonfield chapter. Jim was a member of the parish of Christ the King R.C. Church in Haddonfield, and was previously a member of St. John’s R.C. Church in Collingswood.

Visiting hours were held at Kain-Murphy Funeral Home, 15 West End Avenue, Haddonfield, 08033 on Monday, July 21, 6 to 8 p.m. Jim’s family and friends were invited to celebrate his Funeral Mass, on Tuesday, July 22, 10 a.m, at Christ the King RC Church, 200 Windsor Avenue Haddonfield, N.J. Burial followed at Holy Cross Cemetery, 340 Ridge Avenue, North Arlington, N.J.

In lieu of flowers the family requests that donations be made to Interfaith Caregivers, P.O. Box 186, Haddonfield, N.J. 08033, who assisted Jim in caring for Mary at home for the last 8 years of her life when she was beset by Alzheimer’s.

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Elizabeth McGraw Webster 

Elizabeth “Lisa” McGraw Webster, a philanthropist and renowned supporter of American figure skaters, died on Saturday, June 28 at her vacation home in Sun Valley, Idaho. She was 88.

Ms. Webster was born in New York City to Elizabeth Murtland Woodwell and Curtis Whittlesey McGraw, president of McGraw Hill Publishing from 1950-53. She was the granddaughter of James McGraw, founder of the publishing house. Ms. Webster lived her entire life in Princeton, New Jersey, where she attended Miss Fines School. She went on to Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Va. and Finch College in New York City.

Ms. Webster had a deep love for figure skating, and served on the board of The Skaters Fund, an organization that provides assistance to skaters and coaches in need due to illness, disability or age. Additionally, over some four decades, she sponsored numerous national and Olympic champions including Nancy Kerrigan, Paul Wylie, Steven Cousins, David Liu, Parker Pennington, Derrick Delmore, Jeremy Abbot, Alex Akin, and others. In recognition for her commitment to the sport she was nominated for the Figure Skating Hall of Fame.

Ms. Webster also supported figure skating on the local level. She was a charter member of The Princeton Skating Club and her contributions built the club’s state-of-the-art Lisa McGraw Skating Rink at Princeton Day School.

Ms. Webster was active throughout the Princeton community, serving on the board of directors of Princeton Hospital, and holding memberships at the Nassau Club, Bedens Brook Golf Club, and the Pretty Brook Tennis Club. She was a founder and charter member of the Contemporary Garden Club of Princeton. She also established the Curtis W. McGraw Foundation and the Lisa McGraw Figure Skating Foundation, both in Princeton.

Ms. Webster was married twice, to James Stoltzfus and George Webster; both marriages ended in divorce. She is survived by two daughters, Lisette Stoltzfus Edmond and Marian Stoltzfus Paen; a son, Curtis McGraw Webster; grandchildren Elizabeth Edmond, Victoria Edmond, Alexandra Edmond, Nicolas Edmond, Antony James Maricich, Alexander McGraw Maricich, Anastasha Tatiana Maricich, and Theo McGraw Webster; sons- and daughters-in-law, and great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at the Nassau Presbyterian Church, 61 Nassau Street, Princeton, on October 11, 2014. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to: the Lisa McGraw Figure Skating Foundation, Post office Box 627, Princeton, N.J. 08542-0627, or The Skaters’ Fund, 202 Park Knoll, Princeton, N.J. 08540.

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A. Lloyd Moote

A. Lloyd Moote, 83, of Princeton died Sunday, July 6, 2014 at home surrounded by his loving family. Born in London, Ontario, Canada, son of Stanley and Grace, and survived by wife Dorothy, first wife Barbara Jones, daughters Karen and Daphne, and sons Peter and Robert. Lloyd was an emeritus professor at the University of Southern California, and affiliated professor at Rutgers University. He is the author of four books on seventeenth-century European history, and a Pulitzer Prize nominee for The Great Plague, co-authored with his wife Dorothy.

During his teaching years Lloyd Moote wrote on the history of early modern Europe, focusing on 17th-century French political history with special interest in the new social and cultural histories. In retirement he and his wife, Dorothy Moote, a medical microbiologist, devoted ten years to researching and co-authoring a book on the Great Plague of London in 1665, which told the personal stories of people who stayed when they could have fled and the story of those who could not flee, based on original research in over twenty archives, and combining medical, social, economic, political, religious and cultural history. His latest work is on the history of regicide (and its modern equivalent in republican states) from the ancient gods to the present: The King Must Die: The Story of Sacred Sacrifice. For decades he has arranged talks on wide-ranging subjects for the informal group, Early Modern Historians of Rutgers, Princeton, and Philadelphia.

A memorial service will be held at Trinity Episcopal Church in Princeton on Saturday, August 9, at 1 p.m. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the New Jersey Association on Corrections, njaconline.org, which helps youth in trouble. 

Funeral arrangements are private and are under the direction of the Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, Princeton.

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Harold W. Kuhn

Harold Kuhn, beloved husband, father, and grandfather, Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Economics at Princeton University, and a longtime resident of Princeton, died peacefully in his sleep at his home in New York City on July 2, 2014.

Born in Santa Monica, California, Harold graduated from Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles before attending the California Institute of Technology. In the middle of his studies, he was drafted into the Army, qualifying for the Army’s training program in Japanese based at Yale University. While there, he sat in on mathematics classes at Yale and Princeton, and it became increasingly clear that math was his calling.

After completing his BS degree at Caltech in 1947, Harold began graduate studies in mathematics at Princeton, receiving his MA in 1948 and his PhD in 1950. He belonged to a group of Princeton-based scholars who did foundational work in the emerging fields of game theory and nonlinear optimization. Another fellow student was John Nash, and in 1994, Harold was invited by the Nobel Prize committee to chair a panel discussion of Nash’s work, on the occasion of Nash’s award of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

While at Princeton he met the love of his life, Estelle Henkin, whom he married in 1949. After a year in Paris on a Fulbright Fellowship and a year at Princeton as a lecturer, Harold taught at Bryn Mawr College, before returning to Princeton in 1959, where he was a member of both the mathematics and economics departments. He supervised numerous undergraduate and graduate students in both departments, many of whom went on to distinguished careers themselves. He loved teaching, and his teacher evaluations consistently ranked among the highest in the university.

He also served as consultant to various government organizations and corporations, and was senior consultant and member of the Board of Directors for Mathematica Inc., a Princeton-based research firm from 1961 to 1983 when it was acquired by Martin-Marietta.

As a member of the Princeton University Advisory Committee on Policy (1967-71), Harold wrote the position paper “Students and the University,” which led to broad changes in participation by students in the governance of the University. During this period, he also served on the Committee on the Structure of the University, and the Council of Princeton University Community.

Harold also had an abiding commitment to civil liberties and civil rights. A lifelong active member of the American Civil Liberties Union, he also championed the rights of Jewish mathematicians and scientists under the Soviet regime. He served on the Council of the American Association of University Professors from 1959 to 1962.

Harold received numerous awards in recognition of his accomplishments, including the prestigious John von Neumann Theory Prize of the Operations Research Society of America (jointly with David Gale and A.W. Tucker). In 2004, the journal Naval Research Logistics established an annual “best paper” award in his honor, citing a “pioneering” 1955 paper of his, “The Hungarian Method for the Assignment Problem,” as the best paper representing the journal since its founding.

Harold retired in July 1995, becoming Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Economics at Princeton. In 2005 he and Estelle sold their house at 74 Woodland Drive and moved to New York City.

Harold was beloved “Grumpa” to his seven grandchildren, joining them playing chess and cribbage, making tree forts and go-carts, tutoring them in math, and teaching them the fine Californian art of body surfing.

In addition to his wife Estelle, survivors include his sons Clifford (Katherine Klein) of Atlanta, Georgia, and their children Joshua and Gabriel Klein-Kuhn; Nicholas (Beth) of Charlottesville, Virginia, and their children Michael (Anushree Sengupta), Jeremy, and Emily; and Jonathan (Michele Herman) of New York City, and their children Lee and Jeffrey.

The family requests that contributions in Harold’s name be made to the American Civil Liberties Union.

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Wilda May Eicher

Wilda May (Gurley) Eicher, who preferred to be called Billie, was born to Roger K. and Wanda C. Gurley in Syracuse, N.Y. on July 1, 1924. Most of her growing-up years were spent in Chatham, N.J. In high school she played French horn in the orchestra and band, and provided piano accompaniment for the choir, girls’ glee club, and even the boys’ glee club.

She majored in music education at Trenton State College, where she met Edward F. J. Eicher. They were married nine days after her graduation.

During World War II, the Navy sent Ed overseas, and Billie taught music in the public schools of Plainfield and Newton, N.J. After the war they spent two years in Atlantic City, where their daughter Linda was born; and many years in Bergen County where Ed was a public school music supervisor and Billie taught private piano lessons. There they had another daughter, Nancy, and a son, Eddie. They moved to Princeton in 1961, when Ed was asked to develop a degree program in music education at Westminster Choir College.

In the early 70s, a temporary job at Opinion Research Corporation developed into a career in survey research. Eventually Billie became research director and editor of the twelve to eighteen reports published annually by her department.

Over the years Billie was always active in her church (most recently Princeton United Methodist), and volunteered for the Red Cross, the “Grandpals” program at Littlebrook Elementary School in Princeton, and the International Center’s English Conversation Tutoring Program at Princeton University.

She was predeceased by her husband Ed and her daughter Nancy. She will be sorely missed by her children, Linda Nicholls, and Eddie and Pam Eicher; by her grandchildren, Russell and Elisabeth Nicholls, Debbie and Brittan Riesse, Harry and Jenny Lafferty, and Erica Labar; and her eight great-grandchildren.

Visitation was held at the Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, 40 Vandeventer Avenue, Princeton from 3 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, July 19. A memorial service will be held at Princeton United Methodist Church, 7 Vandeventer Avenue, Princeton at 3 p.m. on Saturday, July 26.

Contributions in Billie’s memory may be made to the Princeton United Methodist Church or the American Cancer Society.

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Beverly Jo Webber

Beverly Jo Webber was born on July 13, 1948 in Princeton to Elvin H. Webber and Addie Webber. Beverly was educated at the Princeton Regional Schools. She was employed by Dannemann Fabrics as a sales manager, Kitchen Kapers as a sales manager, at Prince-ton Market Fair Mall as a security guard, and Chico’s in Princeton as a sales associate.

Beverly was a member of the First Baptist Church. She was known for her sewing and crafting abilities. Beverly was predeceased by her father, Elvin H. Webber; her brother, Elvin “Pete” Webber; and a nephew, Evan Webber.

Beverly’s memory will be celebrated and forever remembered by her loving mother, Addie Webber; her two sons, Keith A. Webber and Kirk A. Webber; her two daughters, Kimberly A. Webber and Christina George; her two brothers, Travis Webber and Houston Webber; her three sisters, Gail Yvonne Barclay, Wilhemina Webber, and Dianne Webber; her nephews, David Barclay, Damon Webber, and Sam Bonds; her nieces, Antonia Bonds, Saskia Webber, Kay Henderson, and Kristin Webber; and a host of other relatives, church family, and friends.

The funeral service was held at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, July 22 at First Baptist Church, at the corner of John Street and Paul Robeson Place in Princeton. Calling hours were from 9 a.m. until the time of service. Internment was at Greenwood Cemetery in Hamilton, N.J. Arrangements are by the Hughes Funeral Home.