Drama scholar, 57-year resident
Philip J. Finkelpearl, a resident of Shaker Village since 1956, died Sunday, Nov. 30, 2014, of multiple ailments. He was 89. Born in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1925, he attended Princeton University, interrupting his education to serve in the Navy in World War II. He earned his Ph.D. in English from Harvard University and taught most recently at Wellesley College. He published two books and many articles on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, focusing on historical and social context. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1971 and an NEH Fellowship in 1987. For several years in the late 1950s, he left teaching and did technical writing for a company in Cambridge.
Finkelpearl was not only a scholar, but a wildly charismatic teacher. He was awarded the Pinanski Prize for Excellence in Teaching from Wellesley College in 1985. Original, irreverent, creative, playful and warm, intensely social as well as reclusive, he will be missed by many. He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Kitty, a familiar figure at the town pond, his daughter Ellen, son Tom, and three grandchildren. A private memorial will be held; please see www.badgerfuneral.com.
