Joseph P. Fennell ’49

Joe died on Dec. 5, 2008. He was 84.  

He prepared at St. Joseph’s Prep in Philadelphia. From 1943 to 1945 he served as a Gunner’s Mate 3/C on a destroyer in the Pacific prior to being accepted in the V-12 program. At Princeton he majored in mathematics and graduated magna cum laude. He continued to study mathematics at the Graduate School. Due to accelerated course work he completed his master’s degree at the same time the rest of the class was having its regular graduation.

Joe’s career started with work as a research associate, and then deputy principal investigator at the George Washington University Logistics Research Project, working with the first commercially manufactured computer. He later became program director of the National Science Foundation programs for the support of computing. Joe ended his work career as director of the Social Science Computation Center at the Brookings Institution. He considered his retirement years in Gainesville, Fla., to be a little bit of heaven.

Joe is survived by his wife, Dolores; six sons, William ’70, Joseph, David, Christopher, Sean, and Patrick; a daughter, Madeleine Caughey; 16 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. The class mourns with them the loss of this fine gentleman who had a deep love of Princeton.