Russell L. Ackoff, a scholar who cared
RUSSELL L. ACKOFF was a brilliant Wharton School professor, much in demand as a lecturer and consultant, author of dozens of books, but in the streets of Mantua he was plain Russ Ackoff, a man who cared.
RUSSELL L. ACKOFF was a brilliant Wharton School professor, much in demand as a lecturer and consultant, author of dozens of books, but in the streets of Mantua he was plain Russ Ackoff, a man who cared.
"He really cared about people of color," said C.B. Kimmins, longtime anti-drug crusader and civic leader who worked with Russ on many projects of benefit to the hard-pressed Mantua community.
Russ worked initially with the late civic firebrand Herman Wrice on community projects back in the '80s, established Adopt-a-Neighborhood for Development (AND) to get corporations to provide funds for needy neighborhoods, and was a fount of ideas to help Mantua.
He would sit in on meetings of Mantua Cares, which he helped found along with Wrice, last attending a meeting several weeks ago, in pain and using a walker.
"He said he was going to have surgery to relieve the pain," Kimmins said.
Russell Ackoff, professor emeritus of management science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, author or co-author of 31 books and hundreds of articles on the subject, died Thursday of complications of hip-replacement surgery. He was 90.
He had lived in Bryn Mawr for 22 years before moving to the Quadrangle in Haverford this year.
Russ was a pioneer in the field of operations research, systems thinking and management science.
But in Mantua, a predominantly black community in which 44 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, this white academic from Penn, which is only a few blocks away, sought to find ways to help the people.
Russ Ackoff and Wrice, who thought nothing of taking a sledgehammer to the doors of drug dens, met in 1985.
"They would sit in a park and talk about what the community needed," Kimmins said.
"His relationship with the people is his legacy," said Wrice's son Tony, also a community activist. "He could fit in anywhere. Color was not his issue."
"Nobody could come between them," Tony said of their relationship. "They knew how each other thought. It was amazing how they could talk about social issues, things going on in society. The two minds challenged one another." Wrice died in 2000.
Jason Magidson, president of the board of AND, met Russ Ackoff when he took one of his management courses. Magidson later went to work for GlaxoSmithKline when Russ convinced the drug giant to provide funds for community development.
"Russ' idea was to get Glaxo to adopt a neighborhood," Magidson said. "Glaxo adopted Mantua and started a program in Durham, N.C. His idea was that other companies would follow."
E. Darnell Ryans, president of Mantua Cares, said that Russ' involvement with Mantua "started with what do we do, how do we make things better.
"After a year, I really got to know Russ and understood how relevant he was. It was a blessing to me to have had that experience."
Russ was born in Philadelphia to Jack Ackoff and the former Fannie Weitz. He received a bachelor's degree in architecture from Penn in 1941. He served in the Army in the Philippines during World War II.
After the war, he met and married Alexandra Makar. She died in 1987, after which he married Helen Wald.
He taught at Wayne State University and the Case Institute of Technology School of Engineering before going to Wharton to teach in a fledgling graduate business program.
Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Alan W. Ackoff; two daughters, Karen Ackoff and Karla Ackoff Kachbalian, and a stepson, Richard Wald.
Services: A memorial service will be held at a later date.