In Memoriam

David S. Pemberton ’58, Skokie, Ill., Oct. 17, 2017, at age 80.

A member of the Northwestern Athletic Hall of Fame, Mr. Pemberton was a two-time All-American swimmer and won the 1958 NCAA title in the 200-yard backstroke. He also placed second at the NCAA Championships in the 100 backstroke in 1958 and won the Big Ten title in the 200 backstroke in 1957. (See "Fifty Wildcat Greats," summer 2013.)

Mr. Pemberton went on to a career as a marketing executive at IBM, Telex and Tandem Computers.

He is survived by his wife, Sharee; daughters, Melissa, Linda and Deborah; sons, Greg, David and Matthew; and 10 grandchildren.

Beatrice “Anne” Arbogast Stanaway ’52, Boulder, Colo., Oct. 5, 2017, at age 86.

A passionate environmentalist and social justice activist, Ms. Stanaway began working in public television after raising four children. She worked at WITF-TV in Hershey, Pa., as an executive producer, writer and reporter. She created social and political segments for a statewide audience and later covered national and international issues in programs that aired nationwide.

Ms. Stanaway held a single-engine and glider-rated pilots license. She helped found a YMCA and helped organize a country juvenile probation system. She fought for environmental causes, organizing opposition to incinerators and nuclear waste dumps in populated areas. She volunteered as a naturalist in Boulder County

For more than 35 years Ms. Stanaway led the Ersa S. and Alfred C. Arbogast Foundation in support of women’s leadership and environmental organizations.

She studied and worked to protect petrogylphs and rock art as president of the advisory board for the Center for the Study of the First Americans. She received two Fulbright Scholarships in Tokyo and Okinawa and a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship at the University of Michigan. Ms. Stanaway earned an Emmy Award nomination for her documentary Closing the Gap: Vietnam, a documentary that introduced Vietnamese refugees to the American public after the fall of Saigon.

Ms. Stanaway is survived by her daughters, Susan and Robin; a son, John; and six grandchildren.  

Richard Allen Willis ’51 MA/MS, ’67 PhD, New York City, Aug. 31, 2017, at age 90.

An actor, author and professor, Mr. Willis taught and directed theater at Northwestern and at Lewis & Clark College, where he served as chair of the theater department.

Mr. Willis appeared in several films. He moved to New York City, where he appeared off-Broadway. Mr. Willis also had roles in several soap operas, including One Life to Live. He published several short stories and wrote Long Gone (2007), a memoir about his childhood on a small farm in rural eastern Iowa during the Depression.

He is survived by his wife, Linda.

Photo courtesy of Northwestern University Archives

Charles M.E. Eugster ’50 DDS, Zurich, April 26, 2017, at age 97. A retired dentist, Dr. Eugster took up rowing at age 63, started bodybuilding at 87 and became a record-breaking sprinter at age 95. “You are never too old to try something new,” he wrote in his book, Age Is Just a Number: What a 97-Year-Old Record Breaker Can Teach Us About Growing Older (Little, Brown and Company, 2018). 

Dr. Eugster set several world records into his late 90s. The world’s oldest competitive rower, he won 40 gold medals in World Masters rowing and held multiple World Strenflex titles. At age 95, Dr. Eugster became the World Masters record holder in the 200-meter indoor and 400-meter outdoor sprinting events for his age group.

Born in London just after World War I, Dr. Eugster suffered a number of debilitating illnesses as a child, including scarlet fever and whooping cough. He served in the Swiss army and then ran a dental practice in Zurich. 

He decided to get fit after he looked in the mirror in his 50s and realized he was a “balding, self-satisfied lump of lard,” he told the Daily Telegraph last year. He started rowing competitively, training six days a week. He retired from his dental practice at age 75 and became a fitness blogger. In his mid-80s, he started working out with a former Mr. Universe to put on muscle. Inspired by vanity, Dr. Eugster admitted, he wanted an “Adonis body to turn the heads of the sexy young 70-year-old girls on the beach.”

In recent years Dr. Eugster became a sought-after speaker on the benefits of staying active into older old age. His TEDxZurich talk, “Why Bodybuilding at Age 93 Is a Great Idea,” has been viewed more than 800,000 times. 

Dr. Eugster is survived by his two sons, Andre and Christian. 

Photo by Terri Potoczna/Courtesy of Tarsh Consulting