many as an investigator and expert witness. He also held a US Patent for a mechanical egg counter for cage laying systems.
Bob was active in teaching, research and extension. His principal courses related to farmstead production systems and their environments, and agricultural structures design with an emphasis on utilization of wood as the structural material. He was a meticulous, supremely organized recorder – one look at his lecture or research notes was convincing evidence, and he carried that trait into the classroom and onto the blackboard! His extension interests were wide ranging, including projects such as truss design for suspended cage layer systems, thermal characteristics of log walls, and prevention of collapse of farm buildings and storage structures from natural forces. Similarly, his research interests lay in moisture control and thermal insulation in
agricultural buildings, safe design of agricultural production facilities, and fastener systems for use in wood structural members. He loved working with wood! He “got the word out” beyond the classroom by authoring print and radio articles for the Cooperative Extension County News Service, and wrote dozens of articles for the department’s publication, the Ag Engineer’s
Notebook, that was disseminated to a broad extension audience, and authored some forty research publications and reports. He also was a recipient of a Blue Ribbon Award for Publications from the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE).
His interests and achievements were also recognized via membership in Alpha Zeta, Chi Epsilon, Scabbard and Blade, Blue Key, and Sigma Xi. He maintained professional contact with his peers through membership and direct participation in the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (now ASABE; a Life Member), National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM; now ASTM International), Society of Wood Science and Technology (SWST), Forest Products Research Society (FPRS), and the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST).
Bob certainly wasn’t all work and no play; he had interests in poetry, photography, inventing, travelling, flying small planes, and, especially, dancing – ballroom, square and line dancing. In 1954, he married Mary Kathleen Junkman, a teacher, who became his loving wife and dance partner for thirty-eight years, until her death in 1992 from complications due to diabetes. They especially loved square dances and would travel far and wide from their home near the Cornell campus in Varna, New York to attend them. And it was the love of dancing that brought Bob his next love, Margaret Thacher Brownell, a widow whom he had later met at square dances. Margaret was a retired nurse and author of children’s books, both aspects of her skills that would add important meaning to Bob’s life following their marriage in 1993, and operated a bed and breakfast in Dryden, New York. Their relationship blossomed, and joyfully peaked when they visited their family origins in 1996 – England for Margaret, and Germany for Bob. Eventually, Bob developed dementia and Margaret’s skill as a nurse was needed daily to watch over him. In 2007 Margaret published a book about his life, titled A Life to Remember, a loving tribute to her dancing partner of eighteen years.
Bob was a past member of the St. Luke Lutheran Church and was a current member of The First Presbyterian Church of Dryden at the time of his death. He is survived by his beloved wife, Margaret; stepchildren Kathlene (David) Gross, Gary (Judith) Brownell and William Brownell; eight step-grandchildren, four step-great grandchildren, and several nieces and nephews.
To know Bob was to know a friendly, quiet man. He had a broad smile for everyone, accented by his sparkling eyes. Borrowing one of his favorite exclamations, “Yep!”, he was a great friend to love and remember.
Ronald B. Furry, Chairperson; Everett D. Markwardt, Norman R. Scott
Theodore J. Lowi, one of the social sciences’ most towering intellects of the 20th century and a renowned teacher for generations of Cornell students, died on February 7 at the age of 85. Lowi taught at Cornell for a total of 49 years, first joining the faculty as an instructor in 1959, leaving in 1965 for a position at the University of Chicago, and returning in 1972 to become the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions. He became the Emeritus John L. Senior Professor Emeritus in 2015.
Lowi’s approach to political science lay at the nexus between American political institutions, political history, and public policy, yielding insights that remain prescient in light of recent developments. In his classic book, The End of Liberalism (1969), he argued that in the United States the rule of law and the power of representative government were being displaced by the ascendant interest group
liberalism. It enabled organized private interests, particularly business groups, to benefit from the expanding administrative state, to the detriment of the unorganized. As the public interest suffered as a result, he explained, “cynicism unavoidably curdles into distrust.”
Lowi considered Congress to be “the first branch,” the most democratic and representative, and he viewed the aggrandizement of the executive branch—at Congress’s expense—with great concern. In his book, The Personal President: Power Invested, Promise Unfulfilled (1985), he argued that several factors in combination—citizens’ growing expectations of government services, the weakening of the role of grassroots parties in the campaigns, and the increased capacity of modern presidents to use technology to communicate directly with the public—were giving rise to a “plebiscitary” character to the office, as presidents generated ever-greater expectations among the electorate. Yet such hopes were inevitably dashed, as the limits of the office in the realm of domestic policy meant that
presidents predictably failed to deliver on the scale of their promises. They would turn instead to their greater powers as “commander-in-chief,” engaging in high-risk overseas adventurism. Their approval