Necrology

Howard Spencer Brasted, Jr. '44

Feb. 7, 1922-Apr. 8, 2008

Howard Spencer Brasted, Jr. '44, a safety engineer who helped in the establishment of the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, was born on February 7, 1922, in Hornell, NY. A son of Howard S. '10, a physician, and Gladys Ronald Brasted, he grew up in Hornell and, as an Eagle Scout, spent a summer at the Boy Scout Service Camp at the 1939 New York World's Fair. He came to the ­College in 1940 from Hornell High School, where he had been a flutist in its national championship band. He joined Tau Kappa Epsilon and, "tooter of a zoot flute," according to The Hamiltonian, lent his musical ­talent to the College Band as well.

Howard Brasted left the Hill in 1942 to enter the U.S. Army Air Corps. He served as a staff ­sergeant in teletype maintenance in the European theater. Discharged after World War II's end, he returned to College Hill in 1946 to resume his studies. As president of TKE in his senior year, he helped activate its new house in 1948, after the wartime closure of its old house five years earlier. He also "fiddled with flashbulbs" as a member of the Camera Club while pursuing a premedical course of study.

But rather than entering the medical field, Howard Brasted began his career as a high school science teacher in Bath and Attica, NY. While at Attica in 1950, he earned an M.Ed. degree from Alfred University. A year later, however, he went to work in private industry, moving to Delaware to join the DuPont chemical company at its experimental station in Wilmington. Initially employed in the laboratory, he soon moved into a new field, having been assigned the task of protecting lab workers from the noxious effects of the chemicals to which they were exposed.

Married to Elaine J. Jackson in New Kensington, PA, on June 14, 1952, Howard Brasted remained with DuPont as a safety engineer until 1959. In 1961, after briefly serving as supervisor of safety training at Rohm & Haas Co., the specialty chemicals manufacturer in Philadelphia, PA, he moved with his family to Rahway, NJ, where he joined the pharmaceutical research laboratories of Merck, Sharp & Dohme Co. as safety engineer and coordinator. While trying to keep its virologists and biologists safe and healthy, he pursued an M.B.A. at Rutgers University, which was awarded in 1971.

Soon thereafter, Howard Brasted moved to Washington, DC, and took employment with the newly established independent agency of the federal government, the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Created in 1972, the agency had the authority to regulate the manufacture and sale of consumer products. As one of the first health scientists and project managers with the agency, Howard Brasted focused his efforts on keeping consumers "safe from the harmful effects of all the chemicals, sharp points, dangerous toys, burning fabrics, etc., that we meet up with in our daily lives." He retired from the Commission in 1988.

In addition to working around his home in Rockville, MD, when not extensively traveling across the country and abroad with his wife, Howard Brasted took up golf in his retirement years. He also played the flute in a concert band and the fife in a fife, drum, and trumpet group. As a volunteer tutor for the Montgomery County Literacy Council, he found great satisfaction as well as challenge in helping illiterate adults learn to read. He was a deacon and elder of the Geneva Presbyterian Church in Rockville, and especially enjoyed singing in its choir.

Long ill, Howard S. Brasted, Jr. died in Rockville on April 8, 2008. In addition to his wife of 55 years, he is survived by a son, Scott H. Brasted; two daughters, Adair Swanson and Karen (Maggie) Irish; and four grandchildren and two sisters.

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