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Note: ewspapers:
Dailies:
THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2002
THE FALL RIVER HERALD NEWS, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2002
THE NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES, SUNDAY FEBRUARY 24, 2002
Weeklies:
THE DARTMOUTH CHRONICLE, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2002
WESTPORT SHORELINES, FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2002
Richard W. Wertz, Professor at New England Institute of Technology
Richard W. Wertz, 68, Chair of the Humanities and Social Science Department at the New England Institute of Technology in Warwick, RI, died on February 22 at his home in Westport Point, MA after an 18-month battle with lung cancer.
Dr. Wertz, an American historian, specialized in technology in American life, modern art, and medical ethics. Together with his wife, Dorothy, a social scientist, he wrote Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America (1976, with an expanded edition in 1989), the first social history of birth. He also edited one of the first books on medical ethics, Ethical and Social Issues in Biomedicine (1973).
Born in Cleveland, OH, he graduated from Yale in 1955, spent a year at Cambridge University, England, graduated from Yale Divinity School in 1958, and received his PhD from Harvard University in 1967, in History of American Religion. He was rector of St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church, Roxbury, MA from 1965-1967, and Associate Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1966-1976, before leaving to start a building business in Westport, specializing in Colonial post-and-beam houses.
In 1992, he joined the faculty at NEIT and taught until two weeks before his death. He loved teaching, and most especially his students at NEIT. He also loved writing and completed a textbook on Technology in American Life. A liberal until the end, he was a fervent believer in bettering the world by helping students to think about the foibles of society. A resident of Westport for 33 years, he was former Chair of the Westport Historical Commission and wrote several books on local history.
He leaves his wife of 35 years, Dorothy, a sister, Judith Bruen of Rochester, MN, a niece, Pamela Bruen, and a nephew, James Bruen, both of Minnesota. Visiting hours will be held at his home, 2002 Main Road, Westport Point, from 6-9 on Tuesday and 5-8 Wednesday through Friday. A memorial service will be held at the Westport Point United Methodist Church on Saturday, March 2 at 2 p.m. Donations may be made to the American Lung Association or the American Heart Association.
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WERTZ, Professor Richard W. "Dick"
Date: February 24, 2002
Publication: Boston Globe, The (MA)
THE BOSTON GLOBE
DEATH NOTICES
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2002
Death Notices (on the Globe's website)
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Richard W. Wertz View/Sign Guest Book
In Westport Point, MA Feb. 22, 2002. Husband of Dorothy C. (Corbett) Wertz. Brother of Judith Bruen. Uncle of Pamela and James Bruen. Relatives and friends are invited to attend his Memorial Service on Sat. March 2, 2002 at 2 p.m. in the Westport Point United Methodist Church, 1912 Main Road, Westport Point, MA. Burial will be private. Visiting hours will be held at his residence 2002 Main Road Westport Point, MA. Tues. 6-9 p.m. and Wed. through Fri. 5-8 p.m. Donations may be made to the American Lung Association Southeast Branch, 1 Abbey Lane, Middleboro, MA 02346 or to the Heart Association of New England, 20 Speen St., Framingham, MA 01701. Arrangements are in care of the Cherry Place Home of Waring-Sullivan, Ashton, Coughlin, Driscoll, 178 Winter St., FALL RIVER, www.waring-sullivan.com
Published in the Boston Globe on 2/24/2002.
THE BOSTON GLOBE
RICHARD W. WERTZ, AT 68
Page: A13
DEATHS
SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 2002
Richard W. Wertz, at 68;
professor, author, historian
By Tom Long
GLOBE STAFF
Although Dr. Richard W. Wertz was a little too old to be called a "child of the '60s," his wife, Dorothy, said he was inspired by the decade of counterculture to question authority, and made it his life's work to "wake people's minds and help them see what's wrong with society."
Dr. Wertz, who died of lung cancer Feb. 22 in his Westport home at age 68, pursued those goals as a teacher, author, craftsman, and rector of Roxbury's St. Cyprian Episcopal Church.
But he is probably best known for the 1977 book "Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America," in which he and his wife detailed the history of birthing in America from Colonial days.
Dr. Wertz was born in Cleveland. He graduated from Yale University and Yale Divinity School, and earned a doctorate in history of religion at Harvard University.
From 1965 to 1967, he was rector of St. Cyprian Church - "a white man lecturing on black power to the black middle class," according to his wife.
While a professor of the humanities at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1967 to 1976, he bought and rehabilitated an apartment building in Rutland Square in the South End. When he failed to get tenure at MIT, he combined his interest in history with craftsmanship and operated a Westport business rehabilitating Colonial-era houses, particularly those built by the post-and-beam method.
In 1992, he joined the faculty at the New England Institute of Technology in Warwick, R.I., where he was chairman of the humanities and social science department.
Besides his wife, he leaves a sister, Judith Bruen of Rochester, Minn. A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. today in Westport Point United Methodist Church.
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THE HERALD NEWS
(FALL RIVER, MASS.)
Death notices 2/24/02
The Herald News Staff February 24, 2002
WERTZ -- In Westport Point, MA. Feb 22, 2002 Professor Richard W. Dick Wertz. Husband of Dorothy C. (Corbett) Wertz. Brother of Judith Bruen. Uncle of Pamela and James Bruen. Relatives and friends are invited to attend his memorial service on Sat. March 2, 2002 at 2pm in the Westport Point United Methodist Church, 1912 Main Road, Westport Point, MA. Burial will be private. Visiting hours will be held at his residence 2002 Main Road Westport Point, MA. Tues. 6-9pm and Wed. through Fri. 5-8p.m. Donations may be made to the American Lung Association Southeast Branch, 1 Abbey Lane Middleboro, MA 02346 or to the Heart Association of New England 20 Speen St. Framingham, MA 01701. Arrangements are in care of the CHERRY PLACE HOME OF WARING-SULLIVAN, ASHTON, COUGHLIN, DRISCOLL 178 Winter St. Fall River, MA. www.waring-sullivan.com
Death notices also appeared in:
THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL
and
THE NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES
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Richard W. Wertz Eulogy by Dorothy C. Wertz at Memorial Service, March 2, 2002
Many of you were not familiar with all the many facets of Dick's life. I'm going to try to fill in some of the gaps and explain how he got from here to there. One major theme of Dick's life was teaching, which he enjoyed to the end. He taught up until two weeks before his death, and hated to give it up. His purpose was to leave the world a better place than when he entered it, by trying to wake up people's minds. He always wanted to teach American history. This intention led him on a long educational path, requiring several detours, including a parish ministry. It took 12 years after college to get the PhD that would enable him to teach. A few days before he died, he said that all those years of education were finally vindicated, after teaching ten years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and almost ten years at New England Tech. He had hoped to make it a full ten years, but lung cancer, combined with congestive heart failure after a massive heart attack in 1999, intervened.
Among the detours along the way were a year of study abroad, a divinity degree, and two years in a parish, all of which were required by Yale and Harvard for entry into a PhD program in history of American religion. Harvard subsequently dropped these requirements just as he arrived at graduate school. Dick always resented having to spend those five extra years, which greatly delayed his career.
His year in Cambridge, England, at Westminster College of Cambridge University, just after graduating from Yale, was a high point in his life. He was raised in the Evangelical and United Brethren Church, a German sect (now joined with the United Methodist Church), and intended to be ordained as a Presbyterian. When in Cambridge, he found that he liked the Anglican service so much that he became an Episcopalian. He revisited Cambridge, perhaps for a goodbye, in June, 2000, just before he had the first symptoms of cancer.
As he was completing his PhD at Harvard, parishioners of St. Cyprian's, Roxbury, where he had worked as an assistant, chose him as rector. St. Cyprian's was an Afro-Caribbean parish. Most parishioners were from Jamaica, Barbados, and other Caribbean islands. He found himself the white rector of a black parish, preaching social issues, including black power, to congregants who didn't want to hear about it. (Most would have preferred a full gospel sermon.) The parish was only a way station on the road to teaching. He resigned after two years, upon receiving a position in Humanities at MIT.
The great grief of Dick's life was not getting tenure at MIT. This wasn't his fault in any way. After two years of attending history department meetings, he was told one day that he wasn't a member of the department because he had been hired when the chairman was away, and therefore he couldn't be tenured because he wasn't in a department. He tried to start a new department called Social Inquiry, but the administration never got around to establishing it, and after eight years of hope on his part, time ran out, [and he had to] go. He hadn't published soon enough. Our book, Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America, came out too late to make a difference. Leaving MIT hurt until the very end, and he must have thought about it nearly every day.
People wonder why, as a childless couple, we wrote a book about childbirth. Not having children was one of the great griefs of my life, and I think Dick regretted it too. The book arose from Dick's interest in writing a history of technology and society in America. Members of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective came to his premedical class at MIT and spoke about how childbirth had become a technological event when little technology was needed. Dick sent me to the medical library at Yale (I was then commuting from Boston to Connecticut to teach, the nearest job I could find) to find out when technologies like forceps and episiotomies came into use, and I came back so full of fascinating information that he said the history of birth was a microcosm of technology in American life and that we should write a book on it. Lying-In, which we wrote equally together, came from the history of technology, culture, and women's movements, not from personal experience, which may explain its balance and evenness. Much later, after a 16-year interlude as a builder, Dick returned to the theme of technology and society in his teaching at the New England Institute of Technology.
The second major theme in Dick's life, after teaching, was building and renovating. He loved to work with his hands, and found work to do even when it wasn't necessary. Even last September, with 25% heart capacity and inoperable lung cancer, he painted the barn. I nearly died one day when I came home and found him on a ladder three stories up painting the cupola, a job that he considered of the utmost importance. Maybe Dick got this love of hands-on work from his father, who taught manual training and social science in Akron, Ohio. His fascination started in earnest when he bought a five-story brownstone row house in Boston's South End in 1964 for $5000. He persuaded me to buy the one next door and for a while we had his-and-her houses with a door in between. The South End was a really tough neighborhood then, near the Prudential Center. One house was actually a house of prostitution when we bought it (we had the realtor clear it out before we took over), and we still have it. We were among the first new settlers in what has since become a very fancy neighborhood. We renovated the house with our own hands-I'll never forget that- and after that he couldn't stop improving things.
We found Westport Point accidentally on a rainy Sunday afternoon in July 1969, when we drove down so Dick could see Southeastern Massachusetts University, where I had taught for a semester, and also to see what was in this unknown corner of the map. A house was for sale, and when found that it was three apartments and that we could pay the mortgage with rentals, we bought it. We didn't even know that Westport had a beach until the closing.
When things didn't work out at MIT back in 1976, Dick thought he would combine his love of history with his love of building, and started a business of moving genuine colonial houses, which were then rotting around the countryside, to recreate a Colonial New England village on Sisson Farm, 50 acres of land he bought at the head of the Westport River. He was self-taught in building, and had a few painful experiences. Dick was a superb craftsman; he did excellent work and didn't stint on materials and labor, much of which he did himself. (There are builders who put two nails in a sheet of plywood. Dick wasn't one of them.) But he was not a businessman-some people just aren't born that way. In a really good year, the business (Westport Housewrights) might show a $2000 profit. Usually it showed a loss. Dick did this for 16 years, until the recession of 1990-91, hammering most of the nails himself.
The job at NEIT was a godsend. He got back into some of the intellectual life he had known at MIT, re-subscribed to the New York Review of Books, and brought home several new books weekly, right up until he died, an intellectual input that I will miss sorely. He was always alerting me to new ideas in a variety of fields I didn't know, and gave me more than he took. He loved the NEIT students and said they taught him a lot. An unreconstructed radical, he was a man of the 1960's until the end and glorified that era for his students. At the end of his Technology in American Life courses, when he asked students what era of history they would most have liked to live in, all said the sixties. He taught up until two weeks before his death, when he had to give up the three-and -a half -hour courses he had assigned himself, because he couldn't breathe. He went in to school to do administrative duties until a week before his death and was still working on a website for the humanities department the day before he died. He originally hoped to stay until June, and was working on a new course on cosmopolitanism. He was interested in history until the end. The last book he was reading, while on oxygen, was a history of the 63rd Ohio regiment, where his great-great and great-great-great grandfathers (father and son) served on Sherman's march through Georgia.
People who have come to our house during the last few days have wondered how we met and have asked to see our wedding pictures. We celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary last month, January 28, together with my cousins Elizabeth and Doug Black, who celebrated their 45th. We met at Harvard Graduate School in 1960, where were both in the PhD program in the Study of Religion. Dick had been engaged twice before, to the same woman, and twice they had broken the engagement off after the wedding invitations were sent out. So when Dick proposed in January 1967, we decided to get married right away before this could happen again. My mother had only three weeks, but she filled the church in Pittsburgh anyway. I learned that the wedding is the bride's mother's show. For years she had wanted a big wedding, without telling me. Several years later, Dick invited her to live in our upstairs apartment in Westport, something that few men would do. It was his idea, not mine. I really give him credit for that. She lived with us for six years until she died in 1982.
We traveled to Turkey on our honeymoon, then to North Africa, Yugoslavia, Germany, Portugal, Peru, Brazil, India, and to Mexico many times. For several years we went scuba diving. A month ago, when he thought he still had some time to live, Dick said that one of his major regrets was that he wouldn't be well enough to travel in retirement, which is what he had hoped to do.
I think we loved each other, but it wasn't a romantic or flashy love. It was a deep undercurrent of expectation that we would always be there for each other. I traveled a lot, perhaps too much, to speak at conferences, and he was resentful of my being away and rather grouchy when I came back, although he told his professional colleagues that he was proud of me. A lot of the time we didn't have much to say to each other, and there was a lot of silence in the house. Although he was extremely fair to his colleagues at work and on the surface handled many situations with equanimity, he could get angry at a lot of little things. There are little mothholes in every marriage. But we were well matched, both being strong and independent. He had a pointed sense of humor, and had "class", as the oncologist said at the end. When he finally asked for his prognosis three weeks ago, after 18 months of denial, he handled his approaching death very gracefully, and I told him so.
Dick didn't suffer. He decided against further treatment two days before his death and was enrolled in Hospice for only four hours before he died at home on Friday. There was no pain, only trouble breathing on the last day, when he was mostly unconscious. He was not afraid of death and hoped it would be over quickly. He gave his corneas to the eye bank and his body to medical science. He regretted not having kept up with old friends from the past, some of whom are here today. On Thursday night I asked him to remember all the good things we did together, and he said, "I am remembering them." Then I said I would miss him and he said he would miss me too. Then he went to bed, because he was so tired, and the next day he wasn't really conscious.
The great emptiness hasn't set in yet. As Gabriel Garcia Marquez says in Love in the Time of Cholera, one of the all-time great stories of marriage and widowhood, you miss the little things of daily life-Dick's getting up every morning to get the newspapers, wanting dinner every evening at six, talking about the latest New Yorker. When we expect people always to be there, we never get over having no one waiting when we get home.
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Dick's Partial Interment in Cambridge, England [by Dorothy C. Wertz]
On March 24, 2003, I buried a small portion of Dick's remains at St. Giles and St. Peter's churches in Cambridge. Dick spent a year at Westminster College in Cambridge after he graduated from Yale College in 1955, just before he entered Yale Divinity School in 1956. Yale strongly recommended a year abroad before entering Divinity School and found him a scholarship. Although Westminster trained Presbyterian ministers, Dick began attending services at St. Giles, an Anglican Church (Episcopal Church in America), and he always retained a great fondness for St. Giles. In February, 1985, when we both took a month-long trip to England, he showed me both St. Giles and St. Peter's, the tiny Saxon church on the hill across from it. The daffodils on the hill around St. Peter's were about to bloom. He returned to Cambridge, and to Westminster and St. Giles, in June, 2000, just as he developed the blood clot that was the first symptom of the lung cancer that would be diagnosed two months later. I always thought that he would like some part of him to remain in Cambridge.
Wilson McLeod, a former neighbor from Rutland Square in Boston back in the 1960s who now lives in Ingatestone, Essex, accompanied me with a trowel. Dick's ashes were housed in a small yellow ceramic bottle decorated with pink peach boughs, which I bought in the Shanghai Museum in April last year.
The two churches are a study in contrast. St. Peter's is a tiny stump of a church with a pointed bell tower, constructed of Roman bricks and "rubble", and sits atop a small hill full of flowers. It is utterly charming. For a time it was used as a children's church. St. Giles, a large dank edifice of blackened brick with no particular architectural distinction, lies in a hollow across the street. Both are close to the center of the original Roman "Granta", and remains of Roman temples have been found nearby. Both are just west of the River Cam, for which Cambridge is named, and just northwest of Magdalen College and St. John's College. St. Giles is on Castle Street, St. Peter's on St. Peter Street.
St. Peter's dates back to the 11th century and has a Norman doorway from the 13th century and a font from the 11th century decorated with mermen holding their splayed tails. At first sight the bifurcated tails look like horns; only after I looked at my photos and read the literature did I realize that these were actually figures with faces and stomachs. This pagan motif, known as "marvels of the East" (an area that was thought to have all sorts of weird people), is common on the Continent in Romanesque churches, but very rare in England, there being only one other example. St. Peter's, although listed as a "redundant" church with no congregation, has services on Easter and St. Peter's Day (June29). I scattered a few ashes to the left of the Norman doorway under the pink-blooming saxifrage plants and put Dick's and my names in the visitor book, along with the fact that Dick had been Rector of St. Cyprian's in Roxbury, MA. The woman who takes care of the church said she would pray for him. As on our visit in February, 1985, the daffodils on the hill were blooming. I had thought of this church much in the intervening years and knew I would bury some of Dick's ashes here.
St. Giles, a much larger church in a hollow across the street and in the shadow of an artificial mound thought to be the site of William the Conqueror's castle, isn't too photogenic. Originally built in 1092, the date on the entryway lantern, shortly after the Norman conquest, it was torn down in 1875 and replaced by a Victorian church, leaving only few Norman arches in the interior. Unfortunately, the rector (a woman) was in the hospital, and we couldn't get in, although we had permission to use the cemetery. It turned out that there was no cemetery next to St. Giles. The gravestones in the churchyard had all been taken up and placed in a row inside the wall in front of the church, so I picked out a prominent one--- white with what I thought was a lion face--- and we buried the little yellow urn right in front of it among the ivy, about 8 inches down. It should be findable years hence. It turned out when I looked at my photos that the lion was really a winged cherub. The writing on the stone, which is the only white one in the row, has long been effaced.
This was a sad day---something final and yet unfinished. I plan to return to Cambridge and attend a service at St. Giles.
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On 29 April 2003, Dorothy died of a heart attack while scuba diving in Cancun, Mexico. She had been attending a meeting of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO), held before the 1st Meeting of The Latin American Network of Bioethics, 1-2 May 2003, where she was to have been a panelist. In a strange coincidence, I had sent the message below regarding Dick's partial interment in Cambridge, a paper copy of which I had received from my parents when they visited the weekend before. Given the date and time, Dorothy had but a few hours to live when I hit "send."
From: Leggett, David
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 9:42 AM
To: Dorothy Wertz (E-mail)
Subject: Dick in Cambridge
Dorothy,
It has been a while since we heard from you. My parents were here over the weekend and said you had put some of Dick's ashes over in Cambridge, and there was apparently an extensive email about this that we never received.
I have just sent you an email covering the Laura Lacey Leggett mystery, according to some papers I found among the things Dad left with me. I hope you will be able to help to clarify this.
We have signed a contract to expand the house, with construction to start in early June. We look forward to the arrival of Thomas in July.
David
Note: Full obituary written by Dorothy C. Wertz, appearing in the following n
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