In Memoriam: Edmund White, Lisa Brown-Miller, Joan Lippincott, Linda Mahler

Edmund White, a creative writing professor whose novels and memoirs earned him acclaim as a pioneer in gay literature, died June 3. He was 85. White published more than 30 books in a span of five decades and received the Visionary Award from Lambda Literary in 2018. He also helped found the nonprofit Gay Men’s Health Crisis in the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. At Princeton, White joined the faculty in 1998, headed the creative writing program from 2002 to ’06, and transferred to emeritus status in 2018. He delivered the keynote address at the 2013 Every Voice conference, the University’s first affinity conference for LGBTQ+ alumni.

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Lisa Brown-Miller

Team USA, U.S. Olympic Committee

Lisa Brown-Miller, a championship women’s hockey coach at Princeton who later won an Olympic gold medal playing for the United States, died May 2 at age 58. Brown-Miller coached the Tigers for five seasons, winning Ivy League titles in 1991-92 and 1994-95. According to a release from the Concussion Legacy Foundation, Brown-Miller died by suicide and her family donated her brain to the Boston University Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center to aid the study of degenerative brain disease among female athletes in contact sports.

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Joan Lippincott

Princeton University

Joan Lippincott, a performer and teacher who served as the principal organist at the University Chapel from 1993 to 2000, died May 31 at age 89. Lippincott taught at nearby Westminster Choir College (her alma mater), performed more than 600 recitals in the U.S. and abroad, and recorded more than 20 albums of organ music.

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Linda Mahler

Courtesy of Michael Loughran

Linda Mahler, a former residential college administrator and University fundraiser, died March 14 at age 73. Mahler, an honorary member of the Class of 1992, was well known to students at Butler College and later joined the Annual Giving office, where her work sometimes included reconnecting with alumni she’d first met as freshmen, according to a family obituary.