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- Julia Billings Crothers, 96, a retired college dean and a leader of the fight to save Wilson College in the late 1970s, died Tuesday, August 6, of an abdominal malignancy at Green Ridge Village in Newville, Pa. She was a resident of Green Ridge and a graduate of nearby Wilson College in Chambersburg. She was preceded in death by her husband, James Crothers, who died in 2001.
Born in Ontario, Canada, in 1917 the daughter of John Harland and Sybil Stonehouse Billings, she grew up in Highland Park, Pa., outside of Philadelphia. She received a BA degree in Latin and French from Wilson College in 1938, an MA in Classics from Bryn Mawr College in 1940, and an MA in Administration from the University of Pennsylvania. She taught at the Baldwin School, a private secondary school for girls outside of Philadelphia, and worked during World War II as a crypto-linguist for the Department of Defense.
In the 1960s she began her career in college administration and served as an Assistant Dean of Women at the University of Maryland, College Park, as Dean of Students of American University in Washington, D.C., and in the 1970s as an Associate Dean at Brown University in Providence, R.I. At Brown she helped implement a new undergraduate curriculum that had its origins in the student protests of the late 1960s.
Just prior to her retirement she was a key part of a group of concerned alumnae who narrowly averted the permanent closure of Wilson College, a small private school for women. After the college's trustees and president announced plans to shut the school in February 1979, she and others involved in the Alumnae Association formed a committee to fight the decision, raised a reported $1 million in support of their effort, and successfully sued in Franklin County Orphan's Court to stop the closure. Soon thereafter the college's president resigned and a new slate of trustees was elected, and Julia Billings became the head of the Alumnae Association.
After retiring from Brown she moved to Lake Meade, Pa. In 1985 she married for the first time to James Crothers, a retired Presbyterian minister and missionary then living in California; a decade later they moved to Green Ridge Village, a Presbyterian retirement community. There she was active in community social life and was instrumental in promoting the building of an enclosed swimming pool. She was a member of Big Springs Presbyterian Church in Newville and of St. John's Episcopal Church in Carlisle, Pa.
Her husband preceded her in death, as did her brother, John Kimball Billings, who died in 2010. She is survived by her sister, Jean Grundberg Hudson, of Hudson, Ohio; a sister-in-law, Helen Billings; and six nieces and nephews: George Billings, Jennifer Billings Walge, Michael Billings, Sibyl Grundberg, Andy Grundberg, and Carl Grundberg; and three great-nephews and a great-niece, as well as by the children and grandchildren of James Crothers.
A memorial service will be held 11:00am, Saturday, September 7, 2013 at Green Ridge Village In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Wilson College,1015 Philadelphia Ave Chambersburg, PA 17201, where a fund is being established in her name.
http://www.cremationsocietyofpa.com/obits/obituary.php?id=596066 viewed July 4, 2016
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1917 - 2013 (96 years)
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