February 27, 2010|By Frederick N. Rasmussen | fred.rasmussen@baltsun.com
Up until last year, Dr. Wolman, aided by a walker, was still accompanying his graduate students - as he had for the previous 51 years - on Friday afternoon field trips to the Western Run in northern Baltimore County, a winding tributary of the Gunpowder River. There they measured its channel, recorded its geometry and observed sedimentation and runoff.
He once explained why he enjoyed taking field trips.
"There's no substitute in a field science for going out and seeing what it's like. ... It's indispensable. It's also a lot of fun," Dr. Wolman said.
Even though he went into semi-retirement in the 1990s, he continued teaching his water resource development class each autumn and his geomorphology class in the spring.
"As a person, he was warm, engaging, charming and quite elegant," said Dr. Edward J. Bouwer, the current department chair who was both a colleague and friend. "And he was in his 51st year as a teacher."
Dr. Erica Schoenberger, a professor and colleague in the department, told The Johns Hopkins Engineering Magazine last year, "I don't think it's possible to imagine Hopkins without Reds."
"He's worked in every corner of the university, from engineering to public health to central administration," she said. "Everyone knows him. He knows everybody. If you did a poll to determine the person who most represents the Hopkins ideal, everybody would say, 'Reds.' It would be a landslide."
In addition to his work at Homewood, Dr. Wolman was active on the state level, where he chaired an advisory committee and then a task force on the state's water resources that issued reports warning of the possibility of shortages in rapidly growing areas of the state like Southern Maryland and the Piedmont region.
Dr. Wolman was also one of the leading forces behind the state's sediment and erosion control law that was passed in the 1970s, which took its authority from the federal Clean Water Act.
He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.
Services are private.
Surviving are his wife, the former Elaine Mielke, whom he married in 1951; a son, Abel Wolman of White Salmon, Wash.; three daughters, Abby McElroy of Westport, Conn., Fredericka "Ricka" Wolman of Connecticut and Elsa Wolman Katana of Baltimore; and two grandchildren.
