“When people came in to talk to him, whether it be students, faculty or staff, he didn’t just go through the motions of paying attention to them. Academia is not filled with good listeners, and he was one,” said Maher.
Rodkin also noted White’s devotion to his students, recalling when White ate dinner with Rodkin and Rodkin’s grandmother.
“I was able to connect a personal part of who I am with my professional future, which is what [White] embodied as my advisor, and it is something I’ll always treasure,” said Rodkin.
White is survived by his wife Barbara, his two sons Andrew and Gregory, their respective wives Elizabeth and Amie, and his three grandchildren Olivia, Alexander, and Jonathan.
–CAROLYN A. SHEEHAN
Robert C. Wood, Policymaker, Author
Robert C. Wood—academic, policymaker under U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy ’40 and Lyndon B. Johnson, and institutional leader (notably of the University of Massachusetts system)—died on Friday at his home in Boston of stomach cancer. He was 81.
Wood earned a masters of public administration, a masters, and doctorate in government and political economy at Harvard, after completing his undergraduate work at Princeton. According to his wife, Margaret, he taught government courses at Harvard from 1954 to 1957 and his students included now-Sen. Edward M. Kennedy D-Mass.
While running for the presidency, John F. Kennedy sought Wood’s advice on urban issues and Wood wrote a campaign speech for him in 1960.
In 1958 he wrote “Suburbia, Its People and Their Politics,” one of the first books about the problems of the American city, according to his wife. He wrote several more books about government and urban welfare throughout his career, the last published in 1993.
In the 60s, while a member—and later chairman—of the Political Science Department at MIT, Wood led the task force in the Johnson administration that created the Department of Housing and Urban Development and served as the department’s first undersecretary. He helped create the Model Cities Program, which directed federal funds towards needy neighborhoods; and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination in real estate transactions. He also chaired the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority in 1969 and 1970.
A “great part of working with him was that he was so involved with the country that you felt that whatever you said might make a difference,” said Jody Fisher Williams ’56, for whom Wood served as thesis adviser. She later worked under him at MIT and at the Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies, where Wood was director from 1969 to 1970.
From 1978 to 1980, Wood served as superintendent of Boston schools during the Boston desegregation case. Marcy M. Murninghan EDD ’83—another thesis advisee of Wood’s and later a staff associate in his administration—said Wood was fired in 1980 when members of the committee that elected him “did not like that he was changing the culture of the system.”
“I learned so much from working with him as he tried to navigate through those shark-infested waters,” Murninghan added.
From 1970 to 1978, Wood was president of the University of Massachusetts system.
“He could work in the world of academia and the world of public life....he had big ideas about what going to make world a better place, and the political savvy to bring that to life,” said Murninghan.
“He was a wonderful teacher of undergraduates,” said Margaret Wood. “He urged students to go into public service, and many of them did.”
He was not only inspirational to his students.
“My father just believed that every person he came across counted and he taught me, as a new politician, that remembering people’s names is much less important than taking the time to get to know them,” said State Sen. Margaret Wood Hassan D-N.H., one of Wood’s daughters. “[He] taught us all that being smart was never enough, it was being good, too.”
–NINA L. VIZCARRONDO