Michael E. Stone *69

Michael Stone, professor at the College of Public and Community Service of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, died in a drowning accident March 21, 2015, in Hawaii. He was 72.

Stone graduated from UCLA in 1964 with a bachelor’s degree in astronomy. He was a fellow at Churchill College at Cambridge for a year. He then earned a Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton in 1969.

He turned down a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia to work in Trenton, N.J., for a federal program that dealt with urban issues such as affordable housing. Marie Kennedy, professor emerita of community planning at UMass, Boston, said, “He just felt like astrophysics was too removed from what people were facing on the streets. He wanted to be involved with the great urban struggles of our time.”

After turning to urban planning, Stone’s career quickly blossomed as he championed the poor and argued for a decent living environment as a basic right. He taught for some four decades at UMass, Boston, where he was a founding faculty member of the college of public and community service.

Stone is survived by his wife, Ursula, whom he married in 1967; two sons; five grandchildren; and his father, Everett.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.