Richard Franklin CLAPP

CLAPP, Richard Franklin Richard Franklin Clapp was born to the Rev. Richard H. Clapp and Ellen Louise (Lyman) Clapp in Brattleboro, VT on May 30, 1917 and passed on August 14, 2014 at age 97. He grew up in New Haven, CT where he received his basic education in the New Haven public schools. He graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1939 and the Yale School of Public Health in 1943. He was employed in 1940 as a Sanitarian, the first by competitive examination, by the New Haven City Health Department. In September, 1943 he was commissioned as an Assistant Sanitarian (R) with the rank of 1st Lt. in the newly authorized Sanitarian category of the U. S. Public Health Service which was part of the U. S. Armed Forces in WWII. For the next 31 years he undertook many increasingly important assignments, foreign and domestic, involving field investigations, the development and presentation of basic and advanced training courses in environmental health and the application of years of experience to leadership in development and implementation of previously unavailable undergraduate and graduate college courses leading to degrees in environmental health. Retiring in 1974 with the rank of Captain (6) he took assignments with USAID and WHO relating to environmental education and training. He was active in Boy Scout leadership and Leader training, the American Rhododendron Society and the Azalea Society of America. He enjoyed worldwide travel, classical music, fishing, gardening and church work. He was predeceased by his loving wife June Greeno Clapp in 2006 after 65 years of a wonderful marriage. He is survived by two sons and their wives, Richard and Patricia and Michael and Nancy and their daughter and granddaughter Tamara and Isabella Dixon of Pembroke Pines, FL. In 2007 he married Althea Davis Stadler, a college classmate and lifelong family friend. She died in December, 2011 after four and a half miracle years of love, comfort and joy. He touched many in his life and will be missed. Services will be held in Bristol, CT. in the Spring of 2015.