Obituaries

Updated 10:00 AM July 6, 2004

Obituaries

John Morrison Armstrong

John Morrison Armstrong, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering and a former director of the Michigan Sea Grant, died June 22 after a battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was 67.

Courtesy Armstrong family

Armstrong was born Nov. 11, 1936, in New Britain, Conn., to Howard and Ruth (Kiltz) Armstrong, joining older sister Susannah. They moved to Muskegon, where he grew up. The family expanded when his cousin Mary came to live with them after the death of Mary's mother, Lucille.

As a boy, he loved math, sports and playing outside. His Welsh terrier, Ginger, went with him everywhere, including to school. He was close to his parents, and his father passed along a talent for storytelling to Armstrong.

He met Patricia Ribecky in 1957 and proposed to her on Valentine's Day 1958; they married later that year. They moved to Ann Arbor in Armstrong's senior year of undergraduate studies in aeronautical engineering at U-M in 1959. He earned his master's degree in aeronautical engineering and fluid mechanics the following year. They moved for a few years to Sacramento, Calif., then returned to Ann Arbor in 1964.

Armstrong often worked two jobs to support his family, and at the same time he returned to U-M to work on his doctorate in civil engineering, which he earned in 1969. He became a professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department until 1986, and he directed the Sea Grant program in the 1970s.

"He did some very innovative work in the application of linear programming and system optimization to the emerging field of environmental engineering as part of his Ph.D dissertation. In fact, I was so impressed by his work that I invited him to stay on as a faculty member," says Walt Weber Jr., Gordon M. Fair and Earnest Boyce Distinguished University Professor of chemical engineering and of civil and environmental engineering. Armstrong was one of Weber's early environmental engineering doctoral students.

"He brought new ideas and techniques to a field that had not yet embraced the type of analysis he had worked on," Weber says. "It was an innovative approach that was to prove highly constructive to the field."

In 1975, Armstrong began to focus on a new project: a small environmental consulting firm he founded, called The Traverse Group Inc. It grew to be a pioneer in groundwater contamination evaluation and cleanup techniques, and was the hallmark of this type of work. He was CEO until 2001, then continued to do consulting work. He remained active in the Society of Automotive Engineers International.

Armstrong had a pilot's license and loved to fly the Cessna plane he and a friend owned. He also loved horses, which he rode on dirt roads near the family's Ann Arbor home. He enjoyed tending to his big garden. He and his wife also liked to travel around the world and up north in a log cabin on Burt Lake.

Most of all, he enjoyed spending time with his family. He is survived by his wife, Patricia; four children, Cindy (Richard) Armstrong Strader, Laura Ann (Jerome) Przekop, Howard Paul (Janet) Armstrong and Rebecca Ruth Armstrong; and four grandchildren, John, Erin, Mark Strader and Abigail Przekop.

A memorial service was held last month. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial contributions be made in Armstrong's name to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, http://www.lls.org/mi, or the College of Engineering, Office of College Relations, Robert H. Lurie Engineering Center, 1221 Beal Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2102.

Armstrong's personal memory page is at http://www.lifestorynet.com; visitors can sign the guest book, view his life story or leave a memory.
—Submitted by the Armstrong family

Benjamin Darsky

Benjamin Darsky, professor emeritus of health services management and policy at the School of Public Health (SPH), died May 30 in Ann Arbor. He was 82.

Courtesy School of Public Health

Born in Canton, Ohio, in 1922, Darsky enlisted in the Marine Corps, serving in the Pacific. He began his studies under the GI bill and completed his undergraduate studies at Youngstown State University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in two years. He received his master's degree from the University of Washington in 1950, then moved to Michigan to serve as assistant study director in the Survey Research Center, enrolling in the sociology doctoral program.

He received his doctorate in 1960, was appointed associate professor of public health economics that same year and was promoted to full professor in 1964. He retired in 1987.

Darsky started his professional career at the Bureau of Public Health Economics, which was founded by Dr. Nathan Sinai at SPH, the first program of its kind in the United States. The name was chosen to avoid resistance to the idea that a school of public health would be involved in the study of health care systems, moving away from a sole concern with prevention and hygiene to a new approach that studies the delivery of medical care and its effects. During the 1960s, the bureau officially was recognized by the University as a full academic department at SPH, and it was named the Department of Medical Care Organization.

Darsky was one of the original core faculty. Along with colleague Professor Charles Metzner, he designed a unique doctoral program, Medical Care Organization (MCO), which combined theoretical and research grounding in one of the basic social sciences with an in-depth understanding of the organization and delivery of health care.

Many graduates of Michigan's program became leaders in both the public and private health care sectors. Eventually other leading universities in the United States followed Michigan's model and developed doctoral programs in this area.

"Dr. Darsky was a monumental force in my professional career. By his scholarship and by his example, he instilled in his students a sense of academic responsibility, a drive to produce credible, useful research, and a strong desire to learn and to teach," says Mitch Greenlick, professor emeritus and past chair of public health and preventive medicine, School of Medicine, Oregon Health and Science University. Greenlick, an Oregon state representative, received his doctorate in 1967 from the program.

"I've tried to emulate his mentorship style and remain committed to young scholars, in part because of his commitment to my development," he says. "His fingerprints are all over my intellectual achievements."

Throughout his career, Darsky served as an adviser and consultant to health care organizations and government agencies, including the U.S. Senate Committee on Aging. From 1968 until his retirement in 1987, he advised on research policy for Kaiser-Permanente. In 1979-80, he directed the U-M Study of Attitudes of University Employees toward joining a University-sponsored health maintenance organization.

"Professor Darsky was one of the early pioneers of the then-fledgling field of health services research, which has now grown into a major specialty in both public health and in medicine," says Rashid Bashshur, professor of health management and policy in SPH. "He was a hard-nosed scientist who held exceptionally high standards for scientific investigation in health care, his own included. He had vast knowledge of the health care field, and he worked hard at teaching the notion of a unique discipline of medical care that is governed by scientific principles and laws."

Darsky is survived by his wife, Anna; his sister, Helen Netler; his late brother's wife, Martha Darsky; and several nephews, nieces, grand-nephews and nieces, and great-grand nieces.
—Submitted by Terri Mellow, SPH

Obituaries

John Morrison Armstrong

Benjamin Darsky

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