Deceased July 14, 2007

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In Memory

Sadly, Chuck Ewing of Lansdale, PA, passed away on July 14 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. He was eighty-one years old.

Chuck grew up outside of Philadelphia. Prior to attending Amherst, he graduated from George School, where he met his future wife, Mariane Buckman.

Although Chuck never could recall a year he didn’t like, he always reflected upon his years at Amherst as being among the finest, often recounting the pleasure of his experiences as a freshman playing football and as a sophomore socializing at his fraternity, Chi Phi. After his sophomore year, he was enlisted for service as a signalman in the US Navy in World War II. When the war ended, Mariane and Chuck were married in the summer of ’48. While Chuck completed his junior and senior years, the two of them lived at Amherst. After Amherst, Chuck went on to get his medical degree from the Univ. of Pennsylvania in 1954. Chuck did his medical internship at Abington Hospital, in Abington, PA, and worked in family practice from 1956-1974. Also at Abington, he was the associate director of the Family Practice Residency Program for four years. In 1974, he changed his practice to the field of geriatrics, becoming the medical director of the Rydal Park Retirement Community.  He was a founder, president and board member of the Eastern Pennsylvania-Delaware Valley Geriatrics Society and a member of Friends Life Care at Home, the Philadelphia College of Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Gerontologic Society of America, the American Geriatric Society, and the Montgomery County Medical Society. He served on numerous boards, including Friends Hospital and the Foulkeways Retirement Community and established the Charles Ewing Geriatric Education Fund at Abington Hospital, where he remained a member of the staff until 2003. He was a member of the Abington Friends School Committee for over thirty years and was their board chair from 1973 to 1978, and an active member of the Abington Friends Meeting.

Bruce Stewart, former Headmaster of the Abington Friends School, wrote the following regarding Chuck’s contributions: “Chuck Ewing was, by any measure, an extraordinary man. He shaped a great deal of my work as an educator and much of my life as a friend. His gifts of leadership to AFS were legendary. As a trustee, Chuck routinely offered vision, discipline, kindness, energy and an infinite amount of patience. Further, he personified loyalty, and he inspired care and dedication in virtually everyone with whom he came into contact.

Forever smiling and eternally optimistic, with a distinctive blend of good humor and compassion, Chuck had a way of making an indelible impression on everyone he met. The lives of his family, his friends, and his patients were all touched by his own love of life. Speaking as his son, I can say that Chuck was everything I could have wished for in a father and then some. Always loving and supportive, he was and remains a great influence in the lives of my sister and me. He and I had the particular good fortune of sharing our Amherst Reunion years, and I recall distinctly his last visit to Amherst during our Reunions in the spring of 2000. His love of Amherst and the lifelong friends he made there never faded with the years; in fact, he was the first to tell you that, as he reflected on the part it played in shaping the life he so enjoyed, his appreciation of Amherst only grew stronger over time.

Chuck is survived by Mariane, his wife of fifty years, and his children and their spouses; Anne Ewing Burns and Jim Burns of Manhattan, and Chad Ewing ’85 and Heather Templeton Ewing ’87, of Needham, MA. He is survived as well by three grandchildren and his sister, Isabelle McVaugh, and his brothers, Pete and John, who are also both Amherst graduates.

Chad Ewing ’85