Frank Alexander Welsh III

1943 - 2021

Dusty Welsh (aka Frank Alexander Welsh III), of Bryn Mawr, died peacefully on Good Friday, April 2, of leukemia. He was the husband of Barbara (nee Ward) Welsh, to whom he was married for 54 years and was born on November 9, 1943, in Evanston, Illinois. In 2011 Frank retired as emeritus Professor of Biochemistry in Neurosurgery, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He also had a joint appointment as Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics there. Frank pursued stroke research during his forty years at Penn. He also taught Biochemistry to first year medical students. His undergraduate degree was from Stanford University (1965), his PhD was earned at Washington University in St. Louis (1970), and he completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Duke. Beside his scientific career, Dusty pursued many interests throughout his life, but love of nature was the greatest, and John Muir was his inspiration. Having visited Muir’s birthplace in Dunbar, Scotland, and sites in Wisconsin and California, Dusty visited Yosemite National Park almost every year, sometimes two or three times. After attending a Muir conference at the University of the Pacific, where he met prominent Muir scholars, Dusty volunteered for several years (sometimes twice) in the Sierra Club Yosemite Conservation Heritage Center. He and his family hiked or backpacked in the Grand Canyon sixteen times and hiked in most of the major National Parks from tiny Isle Royale in Lake Superior to Denali National Park in Alaska. In 2002, Dusty backpacked on the 211-mile John Muir Trail, which overlaps the Pacific Coast Trail. A world traveler, Dusty traveled to Japan, Canada, France, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands, Taiwan, Denmark, Germany, Scotland, Iceland, Hong Kong, and Romania. Dusty’s second love was baseball. From his boyhood days in Rockford, Illinois, where he grew up, he played Little League baseball and pick-up games with friends. Later, he coached Little League in St. Louis, Chapel Hill and Radnor. From the time he was a boy, he played a baseball board game called APBA, and once retired, he joined a local group and played this game face-to-face, later becoming its Commissioner. Dusty’s team name was the same as the team that Thacher Longstreth had used when he played the game, “The Argyle Socks.” Beginning in 1981, Dusty played baseball as a second or third baseman for the Sunday Morning Baseball group, first in Fairmont Park and later at Haverford College. Dusty was also a golfer with parents who were champion amateur golfers. He picked up his first clubs at age three. Dusty found lifelong opportunities to work with children and youth, serving for several years as a leader in Webelos and Boy Scouts, advising the high school youth group at the Main Line Unitarian Church and leading Sierra Club Outdoors in Philadelphia where he introduced inner city middle school youth to nature in nearby parks, even taking them canoeing on the Brandywine. Dusty Welsh is also survived by sons Alex and Teddy, daughter-in-law Bessie, son-in-law Jon and four beloved grandchildren. A celebration of life will be held in June.