A Note From:
IOA Director Victor Marshall

I have been meaning for some time to include a brief note in the newsletter, or to have one or more of the IOA associate directors do so. I am motivated at this particular moment to do so by the death of two gerontologists who meant a lot to me, and to the field: Eone Harger and Walter Beattie.

Eone Harger died last fall, having lived during her retirement years in Asheville. She was the first director of the New Jersey Division on Aging, which was the first state Division on Aging in the country. Thus, she was a real pioneer in the aging field. I met her during the late 1960s while a graduate student at Princeton University. She was immensely helpful to me in telling me what gerontology was all about. There were no courses in aging at Princeton at that time; for that matter, there was not a single professor interested in any kind of aging research. I visited Eone Harger just once in her Asheville home, while attending a conference long before I moved to North Carolina in 1998, and I regret that I did not relocate her and visit more recently.

In trying to build up gerontology in New Jersey, Eone Harger commissioned Walter M. Beattie Jr., the dean of social work at Syracuse University, to come to the state and run some workshops on aging for college and university professors, in the hope that this might lead to some courses being developed and some students recruited to gerontology. I was able to attend this workshop, and from that time Walter Beattie became an important mentor to me and subsequently he worked hard to promote my career in aging. Though at a distance, he was always available with advice. He recruited me into the Gerontological Society, of which he had been president. At GS (later GSA) meetings, he introduced me to all the old-timers who had pioneered the field. He had me invited to international conferences and persuaded me of the importance of international gerontology. At that time, few North American gerontologists cared about aging in any other society, and few from North America or Europe gave a hoot about aging in the underdeveloped world. Walter was a crusader for that, and for gerontology education. He wrote that what gerontology education needs is “disciplinary depth, multidisciplinary breadth, and interdisciplinary linkages”—a maxim that I strongly endorse and which justifies the Certificate in Aging Programs at UNC, other Carolina universities, and elsewhere—and which is also a good endorsement for the UNC Institute on Aging and its interdisciplinary mission. Walter was also the driving force behind the founding of AGHE, the Association for Gerontology and Higher Education, and he was its first President. He gave his entire life to gerontology, and the field is much better for that. Walter Beattie died on January 27, 2007 in Louisville KY, at the age of 83. He is survived by his wife Elizabeth, who was a fine artist and taught art at the college level. One of her works has been in the Institute on Aging since I became director, and it will remain as a tribute to Walter and Elizabeth.

Read Dr. Beattie's obituary.