Phillips Cutright died on October 7, 2020. He was born in 1930 in Wooster Ohio to Drs. Clifford (Ph.D, Entomology) and Eva Goddin Cutright (M.D.). His parents and his aunt, Myrtle Goddin, made it possible for him to spend a summer working with the American Friends Service Committee to rebuild parts of the College Cévenol in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small town in France which had sheltered Jewish children from the Nazis. After he returned to Wooster he served for a time in the US Air Force and then received his B.A from the College of Wooster, and went on receive a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago.
He was a faculty member at several colleges and universities, including Washington University of St. Louis, Dartmouth College, Vanderbilt University, and retired as a professor emeritus from Indiana University in 1994. He served as a member of boards of editors of a number of sociological journals and was a consultant to the Agency for International Development, the President's Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, the Office of Education, and the Social Security Administration. He was the principal investigator on grants from the Social Security Administration, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the National Institutes of Health, and the Center for Population Research. He was also a research associate with the Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies.
He authored or co-authored over 130 articles in refereed social science journals and two books. He worked extensively with areal data -- counties and states in the United States, and nations in cross-national comparative work. Several cross-national studies involved evaluation of the impact of family planning programs on fertility rates in less developed nations. A major study of the U.S. family planning program was the first evaluation of the U.S. program.
After retiring, he and his wife moved to western North Carolina where he continued his commitment to helping others by volunteering with various organizations including Habitat for Humanity, ECO, the Interfaith Ministry of Henderson County and the Henderson County Extension Service. He was an avid reader and loved gardening, art, classical music, travel, hiking, swimming and cooking.
He is deeply missed by his wife, Karen, and daughters, Anuschka and Jennifer Cutright, his sister, Juleene C. Tope, niece Laurel Tope and nephews John (Vanessa) and Drew (Debra) Tope, who will remember him for his kindness, generosity, commitment to the environment, insistence on fact-based research and support for progressive causes.
Phill was a philanthropist, and it was important to him to do what he could to support environmental organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and organizations dedicated to serving others, particularly Planned Parenthood, Pisgah Legal Services of Asheville, the ACLU, PBS and NPR, and Compassion and Choices among others.
The College of Arts