Dr. Thomas H. Meikle Jr., former dean of Cornell Medical College, died Sunday, July 21, at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 68.During his career, which began at Cornell in 1961, he helped reshape the way doctors and other health professionals are trained, in a shift from large lectures to small-group teaching.
He served Cornell for 26 years as a faculty member and in a variety of administrative posts, including as the first dean of the Graduate School of Medicine (1969-76) and as provost for medical affairs and dean of the Medical College (1980-87). He then was president for nine years at the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation in New York, from which he retired last year.
He was a graduate of Cornell, earning an AB degree in 1951 and an MD degree in 1954.
He is survived by his wife, Dr. Jacqueline Winterkorn; a son and daughter from his first marriage: David A. and Sarah, both of New York, and two other daughters, Elisabeth Winterkorn and Margaret Meikle.
A memorial reception will be held on July 27 at 3 p.m. at Roxbury Congregational Church, 24 Church St., Roxbury, Conn.
Margaret Hodgman Stone, a senior curator at Cornell's Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium from 1965 until 1978, died July 3 at her home in Gainesville, Fla. She was 83.
Stone served as president of the Cornell chapter of Sigma Delta Epsilon/Graduate Women in Science and she was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
She earned bachelor's degrees in botany and English, a master's and doctorate in botany, all from Western Reserve University in Cleveland. After college, she was a Mercer Research fellow at the Harvard University herbaria. Following her career at Cornell, Stone moved to Gainesville in 1979, where she became an adjunct faculty member at the University of Florida's Department of Botany. She also lectured at Western Reserve University and at the University of the Philippines.
Survivors include her husband, Earl L. Stone, a daughter and two sons. Expressions of sympathy may be made to the Hospice of North Central Florida, 4200 NW 90th Blvd., Gainesville, Fla. 32606.
Robert A. Polson, Cornell professor emeritus of rural sociology, died at his home on July 4, two days before his 91st birthday.
Polson came to Cornell in 1931, working as an extension agent, teacher, researcher and administrator in Rural Sociology. From 1944 to 1945, he served as state supervisor for the Emergency Farm Labor Program. He was acting head of Rural Sociology from 1948 to 1950 and head of the department from 1950 to 1957. He retired in 1971.
His foreign assignments included a Fulbright Professorship at Silliman University in the Philippines. He was a training consultant at the Philippine Community Development program and a consultant for the U.S. International Cooperation Administration in North Africa and Asia.
Born in Nova Scotia, Canada, he was raised in Washington state. He earned bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Polson participated in professional organizations such as the Rural Sociology Society, where he served as president of the organization. He was also a member of the American Sociological Association, Society for Applied Anthropology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for International Development and the American Association of University Professors.
Within the community, Polson was active with the Rotary Club of Ithaca and the agricultural fraternities of Alpha Gamma Rho and Alpha Zeta.
Memorial donations may be made to the Polson-Larson Fund, c/o Rural Sociology Dept., Cornell University, Ithaca NY 14853.
Nicholas C. Bodman, professor of Chinese linguistics at Cornell from 1962 to 1979, who spent a lifetime studying the historic reconstruction of Chinese and related languages, died June 29 in Northfield, Minn. He was 83.
A memorial service will be held Friday, Oct. 3, at 10 a.m. in the Anabel Taylor Chapel.
Before joining Cornell, Bodman was a scientific linguist with the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the U.S. State Department (1950-1961). In this role he founded and directed a language training center in Taiwan for Foreign Service officers studying Chinese, a school that continues to operate in Taiwan today. Before leaving the FSI for academia in 1962, he was named director of FSI's Department of Far Eastern Languages.
He won Guggenheim and National Science Foundation fellowships in 1961 and 1962, respectively, which took him to India, Nepal and Burma to study Tibeto-Burman languages. He was named emeritus professor upon his retirement from Cornell in 1979.
In 1980 and 1983, Bodman visited the People's Republic of China twice at the invitation of the Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He lectured at major universities and research institutes and conducted linguistic fieldwork on the Min dialect in both Fujian and Guangdon provinces.
He was author of four books, as well as many articles and reviews in scholarly journals, and he was one of the original members of the International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics and a regular speaker at their meetings as recently as 1991.
He returned to Cornell for a year in 1982 to teach "Chinese Historical Linguistics" and Chinese dialects. In 1986 he was honored by former students and colleagues with a copy of a Festschrift, "Contributions to Sino-Tibetan Languages," presented to him during a reception at Cornell.
A native of Chicago, Bodman entered the U.S. Navy in 1941 and was transferred to Pearl Harbor in 1942, where he was part of the group that deciphered the Japanese naval code. He left active duty in 1945 and entered Yale University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees.
He is survived by his wife, Frances Sorrel Bodman of Northfield, Minn.; a daughter, Anne S. Bodman of Sturgis, N.D.; and a son, Richard W. Bodman of Northfield, Minn.
Judith M. Wellin of Odessa, a data assistant and 37-year employee of the Purchasing Department at Cornell, died July 1. She was 55.
"She was a dedicated employee, dedicated to her family, dedicated to her co-workers and dedicated to the customers she served," said Steve Jackson, interim director of the Purchasing Department. "She always did things with a smile, and that's how we'll remember her."
She is survived by her mother, Eunice Wellin of Interlaken; sons Christopher of South Carolina and Stephen Bell of Odessa; daughters Lynne Ferner of Odessa and Tanya Tuckerman of Newfield; brothers Donal of Georgia and James of Interlaken; sister Jolene Hendrix of Interlaken; and seven grandchildren.
Memorials may be directed to the Trumansburg Fire Department Ambulance Fund.