Frank R. Kennedy
Frank R. Kennedy, a professor at U-M Law School for 25 years, died Feb. 1 in Ann Arbor after suffering a heart attack. He was 93.
Kennedy was a pioneer in the field of bankruptcy law and widely considered to be the leading national expert in the field during his tenure at the Law School.
He served as the executive director of the United States Commission on Bankruptcy Law from 1970-73. In that capacity, he was the principal architect of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978, the first comprehensive revision to the nation’s bankruptcy laws in more than 75 years. He was reporter for the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 1960-76, and draftsman of the Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure promulgated in 1972 by the U. S. Supreme Court, where he was instrumental in merging the Bankruptcy Rules with the rules that generally apply in federal civil cases. He coauthored Volumes 4, 4A and 4B of Collier on Bankruptcy (14th edition), the leading treatise on bankruptcy law, and was a coauthor of “Partnerships, Limited Liability Entities and S Corporations in Bankruptcies,” published in 2000.
Kennedy was born July 27, 1914, to David and Maida Kennedy in Strafford, Mo. He and his four younger brothers worked long hours on their father’s farm in the Ozark Mountains, where his father also worked as a rural mail carrier. Of the five brothers, three became lawyers, one brother a physician and the other brother a minister.
Kennedy obtained his bachelor’s degree in 1935 from Southwest Missouri State and taught high school English, Latin and public speaking for a year before entering law school. While attending Washington University Law School in St. Louis, Mo., he helped out a fellow student in the midst of exams by meeting his friend’s sister at the train station. The sister was Patricia Harvey of Tulsa, Okla., who was on her way home from Wellesley College. He said he fell in love at first sight. After he obtained his law degree in 1939 from Washington University, he and Harvey married. The couple soon left for Yale University, where Kennedy was a Sterling Fellow from 1939-40, and where he received the Doctorate of Juridical Science degree. The two remained married for 67 years, until Patricia died in 2006.
During World War II Kennedy served as associate counsel for the Office of Price Administration and then served in the Navy for three-and-a-half years. He was a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve for more than 20 years and retired with a rank of commander.
Kennedy began his legal career at the University of Iowa Law School, where he taught for 17 years. From 1961 until his retirement in 1984, he taught at the U-M Law School, where he was named Thomas M. Cooley Professor of Law. While teaching at the University, he also acted as a consultant to the United States Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury and to the World Bank.
After his retirement from the Law School, he practiced law for 10 years with the Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin.
Many of Kennedy’s students wrote about the profound impact he had on them. In the words of one, “He made a greater difference in my legal education than anyone else. To the extent I accomplished anything, he was the source of that accomplishment.”
Memorials to his name may be made to the Frank and Patricia Kennedy Endowed Scholarship Fund at the U-M Law School.
— Submitted by the family of Frank R. Kennedy and by the Law School
Lawrence Lee Rauch
Professor Lawrence Lee Rauch, a faculty member of the University for 27 years, died Dec. 18, 2007.
Rauch was born in 1919 in Los Angeles. He earned his undergraduate degree in 1941 at the University of Southern California, and was awarded a doctorate in mathematics in 1949 by Princeton University. In the same year he became a faculty member in the Department of Aeronautical Engineering at U-M.
He was best known for his major contributions as a pioneer in the area of radio telemetry, which involves the transmission of multiple data channels over one transmission link. He participated in the design of the world’s first electronically switched time-division multiplex system, a technique now commonplace in cell-phone transmission systems. He supervised telemetry at the Bikini Atoll nuclear bomb test. In addition to publishing in this area and winning several awards in recognition of his pioneering research, he co-authored (with M.H. Nichols) the text “Radio Telemetry” (1954).
Within the University, Rauch provided leadership in a number of vital positions. He was chairman (1950-52) of the Nuclear Engineering Program and chairman (1958-59) of the Management Science Program. He was a founder and first chairman (1952-63) of the Instrumentation Engineering Program, and became chairman (1971-76) of its prestigious successor, the Computer, Information and Control Engineering Program.
In 1977 Rauch retired from the University, assuming the post of chief technologist, Telecommunications Science and Engineering Division, at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He retired again from the latter in 1985 to his home in Los Angeles.
He is survived by his wife, Norma Cable Rauch, two sons, Lauren and Maury, and four grandchildren.
— Submitted by Frederick Beutler, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Elmer Gilbert, Department of Aerospace Engineering.
