It is with sadness that I share the news that Edna Shanis Tuttleman, a former member of the Board of Trustees and an honorary life trustee, has passed away. The family has planned a private service.

Tuttleman came to Temple as a student in the 1930s and was elected class president in 1939. No female had ever held the office of Temple class president. “I guess I just blossomed at Temple,” she would later recall.

In the decades since, she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1942 from the School of Commerce—now the Fox School of Business—and did her part to help other Temple students blossom. She and her husband, Stan, are among the university’s most generous benefactors. Gifts from the Tuttleman Family Foundation have transformed Temple, making possible the construction of Main Campus’s academic epicenter, the Tuttleman Learning Center, and the creation of Tuttleman Counseling Services.

Tuttleman graduated during World War II. After working in the accounting department at RCA in Camden, N.J., Tuttleman enlisted in WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), a newly formed branch of the Navy. She received officer’s training at Smith College in Massachusetts, eventually achieving the rank of lieutenant (junior grade), and was assigned to encode and decode secret communications at a naval base in Boston.

After the war, she enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts on the G.I. Bill. (A passionate art collector and supporter of young artists, Tuttleman later endowed the directorship of the academy.) Tuttleman then spent two decades running the design operations of Corner House, a ladies’ apparel manufacturing and retail firm launched by Stan. The company was eventually sold to The Limited.

In the intervening years, the family has been enormously generous to the city, with the Tuttleman name gracing buildings and facilities around Philadelphia.

Please join me in sending our deepest sympathies to the Tuttleman family.

Sincerely,

Neil D. Theobald

President, Temple University