WiRED Mourns the Loss of Board Member Dr. Philip Pumerantz
BY ALLISON KOZICHAROW AND BERNICE BORN
W
iRED International’s board and volunteers are deeply saddened by the death of Philip Pumerantz, Ph.D., on December 26, 2017. Dr. Pumerantz, who served on WiRED’s Honorary Board of Directors, was a leader in health education. He was the founding president and president emeritus of the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific (COMP) and Western University of Health Sciences (WesternU) in Ponoma, California.
Philip Pumerantz, Ph.D.
“This is a tremendous loss. Phil was a singular soul — the most congenial yet indomitable and intrepid. His passing will be keenly felt across the university community, throughout health professions education and the many communities WesternU serves,” said Daniel R. Wilson, M.D., Ph.D., president of Western University of Health Sciences, who succeeded Pumerantz as the university’s top officer.
Dr. Pumerantz was born on November 3, 1932, in New London, Connecticut, the son of Harry and Pauline Weiss Pumerantz. He served in the U.S. Army in West Germany for two years during the Korean War. Upon returning to the United States, and with his mother’s urging, Dr. Pumerantz became the first in his family to go to college. With the help of the GI Bill, he completed a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Connecticut in 1959, earned a Ph.D. in education administration there in 1967 and then joined the faculty at the University of Bridgeport School of Education. In 1977, he moved to California to found COMP in an abandoned mall, which grew into the 25-acre WesternU of today.
During his lifetime, Dr. Pumerantz received numerous accolades, co-authored four college textbooks in education and published numerous papers. He is survived by his wife of 57 years, Harriet Krinsky Pumerantz; their three children, Andrew (and wife, Dana), Beth and Richard (and wife, Brigitta); five grandchildren, Zachary, Alexander, Clarice, Shayna and Zoë; as well as a brother, Howard Pumerantz.
WiRED board member Suellen Crano described Dr. Pumerantz in these words: “Phil was a visionary, who turned a depressed area of Pomona into a premier, humanistic graduate university of health sciences.”
^ Back to the Top
|
