Kenneth S. Rawson
Kenneth Sidney Rawson passed away on Thursday, March 12, at Barclay Friends senior living community in West Chester. He had moved to Barclay recently, after living at his home on Garrett Avenue in Swarthmore since 1967. He was 90.
Swarthmore was the much beloved adopted home for Ken and his wife of 65 years, Anne, who passed away in 2015. The couple met at Swarthmore College and married right after graduating in 1950, beginning a marriage that was more like an extended honeymoon and that both clearly made their priority.
Ken got his academic start at the School in Rose Valley, a progressive elementary school co-founded by his grandfather, Edward Briggs Rawson, who ran the school’s woodshop. He went on to attend George School for high school. At the Swarthmore College biology department, Ken found his academic calling in the sciences. He and Anne pursued a joint career in biology research, and both enrolled at Cornell University for graduate study with Donald R. Griffin, Ken with birds and mice, and Anne with bats. They went on many cave adventures to obtain bat specimens, almost drowning during one of them. At one point, they trained in Germany, where they studied the homing patterns of starlings. They later followed Dr. Griffin to Harvard, where Ken received his Ph.D.
After Harvard, Ken accepted a job in the biology department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He left for a position in the Swarthmore College biology department in 1959, coming full circle. By 1965, Ken and Anne had three children, Stephen, David, and Susan.
Ken’s research at Swarthmore College focused on homing behavior and circadian rhythms in white-footed deer mice. He also studied honeybee communication, bird flight mechanics, bird migratory orientation, duck mating behavior, bat echolocation, and many other topics. He and Anne continued to thoroughly enjoy all their field work, especially summers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado. Ken’s superb mechanical and engineering skills aided him in his research. He successfully built an ornithopter (a flying mechanical bird) based on plans of Erich von Holst, co-founder of the Max Planck Institute in Germany. It was, apparently, the first working ornithopter in the United States, and he flew it in lectures at Swarthmore every year. He also designed and built live mouse traps and activity-monitoring mouse cages, and was an early user of computers to record mouse activity, in the punch card era of the 1960s. Ken cultivated many close friendships with students, taught seminars in his home and the Crum Woods, and continued his cherished friendships with his own earlier professors.
After 20 years teaching at Swarthmore, Ken decided to retire and pursue another great love of his: working with his hands and restoring old houses. He started a business in Swarthmore “solving the problems of older houses,” often milling custom moldings to match old ones, repairing cracked lath and plaster walls so the cracks wouldn’t reappear, deciphering strange old wiring systems, and generally researching and creating solutions for nearly any problem presented to him. When the physical strain of home repair got too great, Ken moved on to mechanical clock repair, which he continued for another 15 years.
Ken and Anne both took seriously their Quaker faith. They called each other and their children “thee” in the Quaker way. This faith played a significant role in Ken’s life, informing his beliefs about war (he was a conscientious objector), peace, and the relationships among living things. Members of the Swarthmore Friends Meetinghouse, Ken and Anne, along with Al and Esther Rosenberg, wrote publicly in the Swarthmorean in the 1960s about the need to end housing segregation in the borough. By the end of their series of advertisements inviting others who felt the same to sign their letter, more than a hundred families had come forward. Their children have fond memories of attending peace marches in Washington and also the Woodstock “Peace and Music” Festival.
Ken’s favorite escape was at Grass Creek, an island in the Canadian Thousand Islands that had been in his family since 1928. In this rustic woodland, Ken helped build and repair countless cabins, docks, and wooden boats. While reviewing photographs recently, family members noted that “Dad is always working!”
In retirement, however, Ken and Anne took relaxation seriously, enjoying reading, folk music, “Prairie Home Companion,” old movies, computer solitaire, and generally being self-described “lumpy old guys.” They could be seen walking hand-in-hand around the Swarthmore College campus and winding the college’s clocks.
Ken’s children appreciate his unparalleled example of kindness, quiet strength and courage, hard work, curiosity, adventurous spirit, and most of all the transformational power of a strong and loving marriage. In writing home to his parents that he and Anne had become engaged during their senior year at Swarthmore, he wrote: “Tis a monumental job that will doubtless take a lifetime, but since we haven’t encountered any really large boulders, we hold the field to be sufficient for the roots to grow — an abundantly worthwhile way to spend a lifetime.” And it was.
Ken will be missed intensely by his three children, five grandchildren, sister-in-law, nieces, nephews, and the friends and relations who got to know this very special man.
A memorial service to celebrate the lives of Ken and Anne will be planned for the future at the Swarthmore Friends Meetinghouse. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to WHYY or the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
