John R. Meyer

MEYER, John R. (1927-2009) died October 20, 2009 in Cambridge, Massachusetts after years of battling Parkinson's Disease. Since attending graduate school at Harvard University's Economics program, his community involvement has touched many over the last five decades. He ended graduate school by earning Harvard's prestigious Junior Fellowship which soon followed with an assistant professorship at Harvard's economics program. His later years delivered him to many other schools at the university. Thousands of students will remember him for economics, business, government and law classes that he taught or co-lectured. His publications include The Urban Transportation Problem (with J.F. Kain and M. Wohl); The Economics of Competition in the Telecommunications Industry (with others); Autos, Transit and Cities and Going Private: The International Experience with Transport Privatization (both with José A. Gómez-Ibáñez); and Deregulation and the Future of Intercity Travel (with Clinton Oster Jr.). After years of work in urban transportation, including numerous summers at Los Angeles' Rand Corporation and other projects for urban planning, engineers honored him with the 2002 Roy R. Crum award from the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering in recognition of outstanding achievement in transportation research. In the late 1960's, he became president of the National Bureau of Economic Research and had to move closer to its New York headquarters, which entailed teaching at Yale University from 1968 to 1973 In 1973, he returned to Harvard and retired in 1999 as Professor of Capital Formation and Economic Growth, Emeritus, of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Born in the arid outskirts of western Washington, he is the youngest of three boys of Philip C. Meyer and Cora Meyer. He moved to Tacoma, Washington during his elementary school years and later attended Pacific University of Forest Grove, Oregon. After his freshman year of college, he enlisted in the Navy and upon his return he finished his undergraduate major of economics at the University of Washington. He entered Harvard immediately upon graduation and after marrying his college love, Lee Stowell, who predeceased him after more than 53 years of marriage. He is survived by his daughter, Leslie K. Meyer (Newton, Mass.) and her husband George Dean; Ana E. Meyer (Sliver Spring, Md..) and her husband Tad Zachurski; and Robert C. Meyer (Miami, Fla.) and his wife Desiree Meyer. He is also survived by 5 grandchildren - Emma Zachurski, Natasha Meyer, Lindsey Dean, Michael Meyer and Travis Dean. Services will be privately held by the family, and in lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.