Grace Brody, an emerita associate professor at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences who established an endowed professorship in 2007, passed away March 13 at the age of 98.
Brody joined the faculty of the Mandel School in the late 1960s and retired in 1986. She was passionate about research and education on child welfare, particularly parent-child relationships.
Brody’s first gift to the university was in 1986, to renovate a lounge for doctoral students, in memory of her sister, Anne Freidson. But Brody yearned to do more, and after years of frugal living and sacrifice, in 2007 she donated $1.5 million to the Mandel School to establish an endowed chair, the Grace F. Brody Professor of Parent-Child Studies, now held by Victor Groza. The professorship was created to help future social workers build family relations between children and their caregivers and was reflective of Grace’s dedication to the fields of family development and child rearing.
A widow at the age of 26, she was preceded in death by her husband, William Brody, 72 years ago, and by her son, Bill, last year.