Donald Dustin, 82, of Princeton, died October 2 at home.
Born in Topeka, Kans., he was awarded a scholarship to Yale University after graduating from Topeka High School. At Yale, where he received a bachelor of arts degree, his major field of study was economics.
He served on active duty in the United States Naval Reserve during World War II and again during the Korean War.
He worked in Japan as a civilian employee of the U.S. Government from 1946 to 1948. In 1949 he joined the Prudential Insurance Company of America as a management trainee. During his 37 years with Prudential, he served in various departments of the company's corporate office including Comptroller's, Planning and Development, Operations Analysis and Research, and Personnel. In 1978 he became vice president of the Diversified Operations Unit, and subsequently was seconded to the Sony-Prudential Life Insurance Company, where he served as Representative Director from 1979 to 1981. He retired from the Prudential in 1986.
He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Elizabeth; a daughter, Suzanne; and a son, Kurt.
A memorial service was held October 5 at The Mather-Hodge Funeral Home.
Memorial contributions may be made to Princeton Hospice, 208 Bunn Drive, Princeton 08540.
Erma Lee Rouse, 81, of Amherst, Mass., formerly of Princeton, died September 24.
Born in Lindsay, Okla. to the Hill family, she had returned to her first home every few years throughout her life for a reunion.
She graduated from Maysville High School and then from Oklahoma City University before proceeding to graduate school at the University of Tennessee in Nashville, where she earned a master's degree in the science of social work in 1953. In 1967 she completed a second master's degree in education at Tufts University.
While in Nashville, she met H. Ronald Rouse, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University earning his Ph.D. in mathematics. Married in 1951, they lived in Elizabethtown, Pa. from 1954 to 1957, West Medford, Mass. from 1957 to 1969, and Princeton from 1969 to 2000. In 2000 they moved to Amherst to be closer to their daughters.
Mrs. Rouse rejoined the workforce in 1965. She worked in the West Medford public schools, in New Jersey's Youth and Family Services, and later at Trenton State Psychiatric Hospital. She retired in 1991.
With her husband, she was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church in each area they called home.
Her lifelong hobbies were reading, cooking, loaning books to friends, writing, sewing, talking about world events and politics, helping people, collecting useful things to give away, and sharing.
Predeceased in 1995 by a son, Ron, and in 2003 by her husband of 52 years, she is survived by two daughters, Julia Myers of Pelham, Mass. and Moira Rouse Homan of Holden, Mass.; and four grandchildren.
A service to celebrate her life was held October 8 at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst in Amherst, Mass. Memorial contributions may be sent to public radio station WFCR in Amherst or WAMC in Albany.
Robert J. Anderson, 81, of Princeton, died October 8 at home.
Born in New Brunswick, he had been a lifelong area resident.
A World War II Navy veteran, he retired after many years of service as a sergeant with Princeton Borough Police Department. He was a member of the PBA.
The husband of the late Betty Smith Anderson and father of the late Robert C. Anderson, he is survived by two sons, Mark of Gaithersburg, Md. and Timothy of Centerville, Ohio; two daughters, Pamela Anderson of Solebury, Pa. and Sharon D'Atri of Kendall Park; a brother, Daniel Anderson of Colorado; ten grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Funeral services will be at noon tomorrow, October 12, at The Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, 40 Vandeventer Avenue.
Calling hours will be today, Wednesday, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the funeral home.
Burial will be in the family plot in Rocky Hill Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the American Heart Association, 2550 Route 1, North Brunswick 08902-4301; or to a charity of the donor's choice.
Alice Osborn Breese, 86, of Meadow Lakes, Hightstown, formerly of Princeton, died September 30 in Hightstown. She was the former Executive Director of the Princeton Historical Society.
She was the widow of the late Gerald Breese, professor of sociology and urban planning at Princeton University. She was formerly married to Newell Brown, Director of Career and Study Services at Princeton and Assistant Secretary of Labor during the Eisenhower administration.
Born and raised in New York City, Mrs. Breese attended Chapin and Brearley Schools and graduated from Vassar College in 1941. She was the daughter of Margaret Schieffelin Osborn and Frederick H. Osborn. On her mother's side she was directly descended from John Jay and Cornelius Vanderbilt. Her paternal great-grandfather, William Henry Osborn, was president of the Illinois Central Railway in the mid 19th century and employed Abraham Lincoln as an attorney in the 1850s. Her grandfather, William Church Osborn, was president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her father, General Frederick H. Osborn, directed the Information and Morale branch of the U.S. Armed Services during World War II. He later served on the Atomic Energy Commission and helped found the Population Council. Many members of Mrs. Breese's family attended Princeton University and, as benefactors, donated Dodge Osborn Hall and the Osborn Field House (later renamed the Third World Center).
As senior class president at Vassar, she introduced Eleanor Roosevelt as her commencement speaker. She remained active in supporting her alma mater throughout her life.
In 1941 she was married to Newell Brown, an Army lieutenant colonel in World War II and newspaper reporter. After the war, the family lived in New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Conn. before moving to Princeton in 1964. While raising her five children, Mrs. Breese taught English history at the Potomac School in Washington, and later received a master's degree from Rutgers University in library science. After serving as librarian at Princeton High School, she became Executive Director of the Princeton Historical Society in 1977.
She is survived by five children, Rosalind McClellan of Boulder, Colo., Alice Spencer of Portland, Maine, Robinson O. Brown of San Francisco, Christopher Brown of Washington, D.C., and Hilary Brown of Princeton; four step-children, Adele Overmeyer of Arlington, Va., James Breese Jr. of Denver, Brinda Breese Wederich of Belle Mead, and Dana Breese of Denver; seven grandchildren; and nine step-grandchildren.
An open memorial service will be held on Friday, October 27 at 2 p.m. at the Marquand Chapel at Princeton University Chapel.
In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Princeton Historical Society, 158 Nassau Street, Princeton 08542.
Longtime Princeton resident Peter M. Grosz, 80, died of complications from brain cancer on Friday, September 29, at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick. A renowned World War I aviation expert, he also devoted considerable time and interest to maintaining the legacy of his father, the Expressionist artist George Grosz, best known for his savagely satirical caricatures of German society under the Weimar Republic.
Born in Germany, he spent his early childhood there. When his father left in 1932 to come to this country to accept a teaching position at the Art Students League of New York, he and his younger brother Martin remained for a year in Berlin, where he began a lifelong hobby collecting pictures of airplanes that eventually developed into the largest private collection of original photographs, technical data, books and magazines devoted to the development of German aircraft before and during World War I.
Arriving in this country in 1933, he attended schools on Long island and then Phillips Andover Academy before being drafted into the Navy in 1944. Discharged in 1946, he enrolled at Harvard, where he majored in physics, hoping to become an aircraft engineer. After graduating in 1950, he worked in a steel mill in Pittsburgh for a year until he found a job with a research and development firm in Cleveland. The firm moved its sales and administration office to Princeton in 1952, and Mr. Grosz and his bride Lilian came with it.
Later he worked for Applied Science Corporation in Princeton and still later joined International Research Consultants, which allowed him to travel and attend to his hobby and also to the estate of his father, who died in 1959 shortly after returning to Berlin to teach.
Widely known among aviation historians and constantly consulted for his knowledge of aircraft design and technology, he was the author of several books, including The German Giants: The German R-Planes, 1914-1918, which documents the development and combat service of the multiple-engine longrange bombers that bombed London 10 times during World War I.
In 1983 he was named the first Verville Fellow at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, and was given a grant to spend 1983-84 working on a book about Austro-Hungarian aircraft used in World War I. In 2005 he was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by the president of the Federal Republic in recognition of his lifelong avocation as aviation historian with emphasis on Germany in World War I.
When the estate of George Grosz was transferred from Germany to New York in 1962, he and his brother organized the Grosz archives, which included every book and article about their father, catalogues from every art show, and his massive correspondence, which was given to the Houghton Library at Harvard. The Grosz archive is at the Academy of Art in Berlin.
A skilled craftsman and stone mason, he enjoyed sailing his Laser in the Sunday afternoon races on Lake Carnegie sponsored by the Carnegie Sailing Club, which he served as commodore. He and his wife Lilian traveled widely and were in Berlin at least once a year. He was a devoted supporter of Princeton Friends School, serving on its development committee for many years. A loyal volunteer pricer at the annual Bryn Mawr Book Sale, he was known for turning up rare finds among the books on Germany and on military tactics. He was also devoted to his poker group.
He is survived by Lilian, his wife of 55 years, and his brother Martin, a professional jazz guitarist in Philadelphia. He was predeceased by his only son, Michael, in 1976, and his only daughter, Karin, who died in June of lung cancer.
A Memorial Meeting will be held Sunday, October 22, at 3 p.m. at Princeton Friends Meeting, Quaker Road. Memorial contributions may be made to Princeton Friends School Building Fund, 470 Quaker Road, Princeton, NJ 08540.