My grandfather, Dr. Maurice F. Perkins passed away yesterday after a brief battle with pneumonia. He was 98 years old. He lived a remarkable life, and now that he’s passed, I wish I had taken more notes.
With that said, here’s a little about him:
He was born in St. Catharines (I think), Ontario in 1913. As he grew up, he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, and while in his early 20′s, stayed there even when his family left and migrated to Toronto. His first job was in a Department store, and it was while working there that he decided he needed to earn an education – and so with the help of his friends’ school notes, he taught himself through high school and eventually began college with a correspondence course through Queen’s University. He spent a summer working as a “spark chaser” at a logging camp, and then earned his degree in Economics from the University of British Columbia before doing post-graduate work at Iowa State University, and the University of California at Berkeley, and eventually earning a PhD in Economics from Harvard University in Cambridge MA. In the mid-40′s he married his wife (my Grandmother) in Reno, NV. He went on to work as a statistician for the British Embassy in Washington D.C., and then at the World Bank. In the early 60′s, he accepted a job on faculty at Michigan State University, and after four years left to rejoin the World Bank as an economist, where he worked until the late 60′s. During his time at the world bank, he visited Iran, Thailand, The Congo, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, and several other countries, performing economic research. In 1968 my Grandfather was hired by Brock University in St. Catharines Ontario as its first Chairman of the Department of Economics. He retired in 1979.
He was a dedicated family man, and likely one of the world’s first “jet setters” and traveled many places. He expressed some regret for never having made it to Tennessee though…he thought the name “Tennessee” was intriguing. He enjoyed a retirement of about 33 years, and was sharp until the end – continuing to soak up weekly issues of “The Economist” and relentlessly rewatching old episodes of the “Lawrence Welk” show. He was preceded in death by his wife, Gilda Perkins, who passed in 2005, and is survived by his two daughters, Susan Bowling and Cheryl Scheer, his two grandchildren, Stacia LaGarde and myself, Darren Bowling, and three great grandchildren, Leonard IV, Anastazia, and Takeo LaGarde.
An interview I recorded with my Grandpa in 2001 can be heard here.
