Remembering Sarah Lee Lippincott

This has been the season for passings, I’m afraid. Last week we noted the passing of Charles Van Doren, whose path crossed with Dave Garroway’s in the late 1950s. And then a couple days ago came word that Dave’s third wife, Sarah Lee Lippincott, passed away on Feb. 28.¹ In many ways she was one of the most remarkable people in Garroway’s life – but her life in itself was no less remarkable.

Sarah Lippincott was born in Philadelphia in October 1920, and through her life she would retain close ties to the Philadelphia area. From 1938 to 1939 she attended Swarthmore College. She then attended the University of Pennsylvania College for Women, where in addition to her studies she played on the tennis and basketball teams, and graduated in 1942.

Her interest in astronomy led to a long professional association with Swarthmore College. Hired as a research assistant in astronomy in 1942, she earned a master’s degree in astronomy from Swarthmore in 1950. Swarthmore promoted her to a research associate in 1952, and in 1961 she was named a lecturer. In 1972 she was named director of Swarthmore’s Sproul Observatory, and in 1977 she was named a professor. During her career, she also served as a visiting astronomer at the University of California-Santa Cruz’s Lick Observatory (1949) and at the California Institute of Technology (1978). Lippincott also went to France on a Fulbright fellowship, and co-authored the book Point to the Stars.

Lippincott conducted much research in astrometry, which looks into measuring the positions and motions of celestial bodies. Peter van de Kamp, who directed the Sproul Observatory from 1937 to 1972, was a leading researcher in astrometry. The two worked on many projects and he was a key mentor to her. In turn, Lippincott was a mentor to many aspiring astronomers. A young Swarthmore student, whose love for astronomy dated to her childhood days stargazing with her father, saw in Lippincott an example of the independent and professional woman she herself could become. However, this student noted that despite her accomplishments, Lippincott didn’t have a faculty position, and this inspired the young student to earn a doctorate so she could be faculty someday. This student went on to become Dr. Sandra Faber, whose distinguished career has included a faculty position at the University of California-Santa Cruz, development of the Faber-Jackson relation, helping establish the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, helping design a camera for the Hubble Space Telescope, along with countless other projects and publications.

In 1973 Lippincott was granted an honorary doctorate from Villanova University. That same year, she became president of the International Astronomical Union. Her work and contacts with astronomers the world over had led to some interesting connections and international projects, including opportunities in areas that would ordinarily be considered forbidden. One such project came in 1975, when she arranged a tour so amateur astronomers could visit the great telescopes of the Soviet Union, including one telescope that was the world’s largest. And it just happened that one of the expedition’s members was a bespectacled amateur astronomer who had relocated to California.

In 1983 Lippincott would recall to interviewer Terry Gross that she first met Dave Garroway on a hot August day at Kennedy airport, as the tour prepared to depart. Years before, friends had suggested she watch Garroway’s television programs because he did occasional segments about astronomy, but she never had. Because she knew of his interest in astronomy, she wasn’t surprised to meet him. She recalled that they hit it off from the beginning, as they sat together on the bus and on the airplane. She found him “such a charming person” who lived up to others’ description as “so gracious, so charming, so quiet and low-key, but an extremely high-class man of great quality.” Their friendship took root, and after they came back from the three-week tour they stayed in touch. Although they lived on opposite ends of the country, they found ways to visit each other. And, eventually, they married.

Their union brought the question of where to live. They toyed with the idea of living in California, but when Garroway found Swarthmore to be appealing, they settled there. She recalled that he once said he had 40 addresses during his life, and that he kept a list of all the places he had lived, so the move wasn’t unusual for him. In Swarthmore, Garroway developed new friendships among her circles and renewed friendships from the past. But she remembered him as circulating mostly in a small group of friends. “He was not one for being gregarious or being a party-goer.” She remembered him as “a very private person, and I think our friends respected this.” Instead, she remembered him as a very avid reader with an interest in so many things, sharing a house full of gadgets, with all different kinds of music on hand and in the air.²

After Garroway died in 1982 she and the family worked to memorialize his life and works. Garroway’s funeral was a private family observance, but when many people requested a way to pay tribute to him, the family arranged a jazz concert in early 1983 featuring his old friends like Sarah Vaughan, Marian McPartland and others. The family also helped establish the Dave Garroway Laboratory for the Study of Depression at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sarah continued with an active life, and eventually remarried.³ Swarthmore named her Professor Emerita of Astronomy and Director Emerita of the Sproul Observatory. She maintained her admiration for her mentor Peter van de Kamp; when he died in 1995, she wrote an obituary that was published by the American Astronomical Society, and when Swarthmore dedicated an observatory named for van de Kamp in 2009, she attended. Well into her 90s she kept active and stayed connected with her family. Her remarkable, productive and inspiring life came to an end on February 28, after 98 years.

I’ve gone on at length about her life in this post, and into areas not necessarily connected to Dave Garroway. But to reduce her significance merely to her friendship and marriage with him just wouldn’t be right – not after everything she accomplished⁴, and what she meant to so many people. I commemorate her here as someone who brought happiness to Dave Garroway in his later years, yes. But I also salute her for all she did for the cause of science, and as an educator myself I honor her for all she did to educate and inspire the many students she taught over the years. And I also salute her for a long life well-lived, and lived her own way.

SOURCES:

• Linda L. Miller, “Sandra Faber.” In Astronomers and Cosmologists (Dean Miller, editor). New York: Cavendish Square, 2014. 51-53.
• “Sandra Faber.” Wikipedia entry.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Faber
• “Sarah Lee Lippincott.” Wikipedia entry.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Lee_Lippincott
• Terry Gross, interview with Sarah L. Garroway, 1983. Dave Garroway Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
• Tiffany Wayne, American Women of Science Since 1900, Vol. 1. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio Group, 2011. 624-625.

1. This is late news, I know. I honestly didn’t know about it until I got a phone call a few nights ago.
2. Garroway’s love of music was a happy coincidence, for Sarah’s mentor Peter van de Kamp was a noted lover of music and a talented musician in his own right, known for showing Charlie Chaplin movies and providing his own piano accompaniment, and he even had a P.D.Q. Bach song written in his honor.
3. She married Christian Zimmerman, which accounts for why you’ll sometimes see her cited as “Sarah Zimmerman.”
4. Especially in a time when being an independent woman wasn’t nearly as easy as it is now. There’s no way of knowing just how much she would had to endure back then. All I know is, it would have taken serious character and determination.