David Stuart Palermo

David Stuart Palermo August 21, 1929 - March 3, 2011 David S. Palermo, 81, formerly of State College, died March 3, 2011, at his home in Larchmont, N.Y., after a long illness. He was born in Norwood, Mass. on Aug. 21, 1929, the oldest child of Alfonso Albert and Carolyn Pollock Palermo. He was the beloved husband of 30 years of Marion Gindes; loving father of Scott Palermo and his wife, Jeanne, Craig Palermo and his wife, Kerrie, Lynn Palermo, Lisa Palermo, and step-daughter, Jessica Hornstein and her husband, Peter Grekin; grandfather of 11 grandchildren; and brother of Mary Jane Wallace and the late Penual Allan. He is also survived by his former wife, Shirley Bowen Palermo. David was a mentor and role model to his students and a kind, generous person. He will be missed by many people whose lives he touched. David graduated from the Loomis School in 1946 and earned a B.S. in Education and Psychology in 1951 from Lynchburg College, Va. He earned an M.S. in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Ph.D. in Experimental Child Psychology from the State University of Iowa (now University of Iowa) in 1955. He began his career as Assistant Professor of Psychology at Southern Illinois University and as Assistant Professor of Psychology at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. In 1963, he joined the faculty at The Pennsylvania State University as Associate Professor of Psychology, rising to full professor in 1966. He received a Career Development award from the NICHD (National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development). He was a visiting professor at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in 1969 and a Senior Fulbright Scholar at the University of Sydney, Australia in 1975. For over 30 years, he did pioneering research in Psycholinguistics, specifically, in child cognitive development and language acquisition. His contributions had a broad impact on the field, including reshaping, with James Jenkins, research methodology in language acquisition. His publications also addressed questions relating to the philosophy and sociology of science. David served as editor for the journal Child Development Abstracts and Bibliography for 13 years and the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology for 10 years. He served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, and Cognitive Development. His work resulted in over a hundred scholarly articles and edited volumes and a book titled Psychology of Language (1978). From 1988-1993, David served as Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Liberal Arts at Penn State. He retired in 1993 as Professor Emeritus. The same year, he received the Thornton Award at Lynchburg College, Va., given by Phi Kappa Phi to alumni who have made significant contributions to their field. He pursued his passion for color photography into retirement, exhibiting work at the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the arts and other venues. David donated his body to the Columbia University Medical School in New York, N.Y. A celebration of his life will be held at a date to be announced. In lieu of flowers, the family kindly asks that contributions in his memory be made to The Child Study Center at Penn State (863-1827), Lynchburg College (434-544-8297), or the Centre County Community Foundation (237-6229).