The Wire @ WPI Online
VOLUME 11, NO. 2     SEPTEMBER 1997

Recent deaths

Malama Robbins Collinsworth, 72, a choral director and teacher who founded the WPI Womenıs Chorale and was adjunct associate professor of music at the university until 1991, died May 30 in Sarasota (Fla.) Memorial Hospital after a long struggle with aplastic anemia.

Robbins Collinsworth was the founder and director of the Salisbury Singers, the Worcester Lyric Opera Co., and the Worcester Youth Chorus. She was the first woman to serve as choral director of the Worcester County Music Association. She was a longtime professor at Anna Maria College, where she founded and directed the Anna Maria College Chorus.

In 1976, she founded the WPI Womenıs Chorale. The group participated in the Intercollegiate Womenıs Glee Club Festival Competition, earning several silver and bronze medals. In 1988 she sponsored the competition at WPI, where the chorale received a gold medal. The group, now known as Alden Voices, is currently directed by Margaret Tartaglia-Konkol, a graduate of Anna Maria College and an original member of the Salisbury Singers who was Robbins Collinsworthıs assistant at WPI for four years.

Robbins Collinsworth leaves her husband, Even T. Collinsworth Jr.; a daughter, Alexis Robbins Black of Pittsburgh; two stepsons, a stepdaughter, a brother, a sister, and three grandchildren. Her previous husband, the Rev. Wallace W. Robbins, died in 1988.

A memorial service was held on June 19 in First Unitarian Church in Worcester, where Wallace Robbins had been pastor.

Harold Scott Corey, 78, of Fiskdale, Mass., a former mechanical engineering professor, died May 24 at Saint Vincent Hospital, Worcester, after a brief illness. A memorial service was held on May 28 in Alden Memorial.

Corey, who earned his bachelorıs and masterıs degrees at Fitchburg State College, joined the WPI faculty in 1951 after teaching at the University of Massachusetts and Syracuse University. He retired in 1984. During his WPI career he established Shield, an organization to get nonfraternity students active in social and intramural athletic activities. He founded the WPI Chapter of Alpha Phi Omega, the national service fraternity, and served as its advisor for 20 years. The 1964 Peddler was dedicated to him, describing him as ³a man whose association with the school has been marked by his devotion to what should be the only legitimate objective of Tech - the education and growth of the student.²

Among his relatives, he leaves three sons, H. Scott Corey III of Sturbridge, Donald Corey of Virginia Beach, Va., and Paul Corey of Bangor, Maine; two daughters, Ann Corey MacGregor of Fiskdale and Megan Corey of Santa Cruz, Calif.; and seven grandchildren.


[WPI] [Contents] [Back] [Top]

webmaster@wpi.edu
Last modified: Thu Oct 23 12:26:46 EDT 1997