Obituary of Albert W. King

WESTFIELD - Albert W. King, 91, of Cottage St., Westfield, NY, died on Friday, June 19th, 2015, at Absolut Care of Westrfield, a skilled nursing facility. Named after his maternal grandfather, King was born in 1924 in Jamestown, NY, as Westfield, where his parents lived, had no hospital at that time. His mother, Wyllian (Knapp) King, a graduate of the University of Minnesota, came to Westfield in 1920 as the director of the YWCA. His father, Harry T. King, a graduate of the Pennsylvania State University, worked in Westfield for Welch's, including in later years as the head of quality control. The couple was married in 1923. King, who worked part-time as the sexton of St. Peter's Episcopal Church for two years while in high school, was graduated from the Westfield Academy and Union School in 1942. During World War II, he served with the 914th Signal Company in the U.S. Army, including for 18 months as a radio repairman in Italy. King was graduated from Trinity College (Hartford, CT) in 1949 with a degree in general science. He later received a masters degree in science education from Cornell University in 1954 and a masters degree in earth science from Franklin and Marshall College in 1974. He taught science at first in private boys schools: the Phelps School in Malvern, PA, from 1949 to 1952, and then the Cincinnati Country Day School, 1952-1954. In the latter year he also took voice lessons at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. In 1954/55 King worked as a laboratory technician in bacteriology at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, NY. After pursuing additional graduate course work in food technology and animal reproduction at Iowa State University in 1955/56, he filled in for a professor at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, during the 1956/57 academic year. He then secured a teaching position in a neighboring county at York Junior College, which later became the four-year institution known as York College of Pennsylvania. Here King taught science courses to non-science majors for 31 years until retiring in 1988. The courses that he taught included biology, microbiology, physical science (a course combining physics and chemistry) and earth science. In connection with the earth science course, which sometimes included field trips, he became known on campus to some of his students as "Doc Rock." King married Margaretta S. Cash, a graduate of the University of Nebraska, in Ames, IA, in 1958. At the time they met, she was the "pay mistress" in the student union at Iowa State, although she had previously taught several mathematics courses as a part-time instructor. In York, both she and her husband were active in St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, where King sang in the choir for many years. In retirement, King and his spouse made trips in the American West and Mid-West to view geological features and visit relatives--as they had occasionally during the summer months in earlier years--and also traveled to western Canada and twice visited Europe. During this period, the couple continued to reside in Springettsbury Township, a suburb of York in which they had owned a home since 1960. Among other his other retirement activities, King served as an officer of the York Rock and Mineral Club, which had published his 1986 pamphlet entitled "York's Building Stones: Geology and Architecture." In 1994 King and his wife removed to Lancaster County, where he continued to live after her death in 1996. He returned to live in his hometown of Westfield in 2001. An amateur genealogist, King was a descendant of one Samuel King, a first mate and later sea captain on voyages out of Philadelphia in the early nineteenth century, as well as a descendant of John Endicott, the first representative of the Massachusetts Bay Company in New England. King's childhood fascination with the interrelationships of persons in his hometown continued after his return to Westfield, when he focused his research on the genealogy of the area's Italian families. He also continued to trace his own ancestry via Ancestry.com using the facilities of Westfield's Patterson Library.