Jack Penney died on January 31, 1999, at his home, of a heart attack. He leaves his wife Anne and two children, Jessica and Ellen. He was in the Band at Dartmouth. His home address is given by the College as 20 Chestnut Street, #3, Boston 02108-3602. Phone number is unlisted. According to my Dartmouth database, he was a doctor and had been employed by the Mass General Hospital. The notice from Dartmouth mentions the source of the information as the Boston Globe, February 5, 1999.
From The '69Times:
Jack is another one of those guys whom I knew only slightly. I know he was on the fourth floor of New Hamp during freshman year and that’s probably about the last time I saw him. He did write for the Reunion Book, fortunately:
To tell the truth, Dartmouth had very little to do with making me who I am. My mother remembers that in sixth grade I told her that I was going to be a brain surgeon. However, after flirting with a mathematics career in high school, I arrived in Hanover thinking that I wanted to be an oceanographer. I was under the delusion that this meant cruises in the South Seas to study the fish. (I had confused oceanography with the marine biology articles in National Geographic.) Then, I discovered that Dartmouth oceanographers went to the arctic and studied salinity. In a typical sophomore identity crisis, I returned to my earlier dream of being a doctor.
Between junior and senior years, I worked with a medical researcher in order to get more leverage for medical school and discovered that I loved (and was good at) laboratory research. While in medical school I discovered that neuroscience was my favorite research field. (Physiological Psych had prepared me well.) So, I ended up in a field not too far from what I told my mother in sixth grade.
I married a medical school classmate with similar interests. We have become quite successful scientists and role models for other scientific couples. It turns out that science is an entrepreneurial system where two can succeed much more easily than one. Your lousy ideas get critiqued immediately and the work load for carrying out the good ideas gets divided.
It turns out that science is an entrepreneurial system where two can succeed much more easily than one.
Neuroscience led us into studying Huntington’s disease, a genetically caused brain degeneration that strikes people in their 30’s and 40’s, killing them over the next 15 years. Since the disease attacks people at the peak of their productive lives, it drives their families to the bottom of the economic ladder. In searching for the gene we discovered that there is a 12,000–person family with the disease living in Venezuela. Falling to the bottom of the economic ladder in a third world country means that they live in brutal poverty. We are trying to help the family and have started a foundation [501(c)(3) status, IRS tax exempt number 38-2857006] that for the last 3 years has hired a Venezuelan physician to care for the family. The person we have hired is a saint, making house calls in 100° heat for 12 hours a day. Any and all contributions are welcomed by the Venezuela Huntington’s Disease Family Fund, 25 Brackett Road, Newton, MA 02158.
The Class sends its sympathies to Jack’s family.
These classmate obituary pages are our attempt to honor and remember classmates who have passed away. We have attempted to find and share a public obituary and have added some photos and classmate comments. In some cases we have not been able to find an obituary. If you know of an obituary where one is missing, please let us know. If you have a remembrance you think is important to share, please let us know. Comments can be submitted through the Contact Us form on this web site.