Colin M. Cameron ’09, of Needham, Mass., Sept. 2, 2016. He was 29. Kevin C. Fallon ’09, of Scotia, N.Y., who was a claims adjuster at Travelers Insurance and a first lieutenant with the Army National Guard, Sept. 15, 2016. Kevin, who enjoyed music and art and was rarely without his guitar, was 30.
Friends of Union College Jane Perlstein, wife of the late Justin “Jim” ’42, and mother of Bill ’71, John ’74, and Tom, died Dec. 29, 2016 at 90. Among her many ties to Union, she established the Jim Perlstein ’42 Scholarship for students studying mathematics. A lifelong New Yorker, she received her nursing degree from Mt. Sinai Hospital, and earned her college degree as an adult after raising her three sons. She and Jim, who died in 2011, were married 62 years. Martin Schaden, of Rockville Centre, N.Y., a theoretical physics professor at Rutgers University-Newark who held a doctorate in nuclear physics from the University of Vienna and also taught at Union College and New York University, July 14, 2016. The former director of the graduate program in applied physics at Rutgers-Newark, he was 60. Joseph Reno, of Altamont, N.Y., a part-time cleaner in Facilities Services who joined Union in 2015, Oct. 13, 2016. Joe, who loved camping and fishing, and will be remembered for his sarcastic sense of humor and contagious laugh, was 54.
PHILLIP D. SNOW
C
olleagues and other friends are mourning the passing of Phillip D. Snow, the gregarious professor of civil engineering emeritus who devoted much of his teaching and research to protecting and restoring water resources. He died Aug. 18, 2016 at his home in Ocala, Fla. He was 73. He joined the College in 1974 and rose to full professor by the time he retired in 2003. He served as department chair and director of Environmental Studies. Snow, easy to spot in his trademark yellow tape measure suspenders, was often found leading students in research at area lakes and streams. Collins Lake in Scotia, where Snow directed a dredging effort with Profs. Carl George and Peter Tobiessen, was a frequent destination for field trips. Snow led restoration projects at a number of other local lakes including Saratoga Lake, Ann Lee Pond and Central Park Pond in Schenectady. For seven years, he co-taught a mini-term course, “Water Resources in Sao Paulo, Brazil,” with Martha Huggins of Sociology and, later, William Garcia of Modern Languages. Students visited favelas, wastewater treatment plants, steel mills and beaches to investigate the challenges of protecting water sources in highly populated areas.
He worked closely with the late Prof. Gil Harlow to assemble an environmental studies lab composed largely of items they acquired from the Army surplus warehouse in Rotterdam. He also worked with Prof. Frank Griggs to reconstruct the Squire Whipple Bridge near the northeast corner of campus. They also rebuilt a half dozen other bridges in the area. Besides his teaching, he served as a consultant for a number of area engineering firms. He received grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Science Foundation toward the study of lake restoration projects. He presented and published in a variety of venues including those sponsored by the EPA and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. He was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the North American Lake Management Society and the American Water Resources Association. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geology at Marietta College and Syracuse University, respectively. He earned his master’s and Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Survivors include his wife, Diane; and two children, Hillary and Michael.
Winter 2017 UNION COLLEGE
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