Calling Hours: 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 pm, Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Service: 11 am, Wednesday, April 19, 2017, The Reformed Church of Bronxville, Bronxville, NY
Evelyn Goodwin Potter, a longtime resident of Bronxville, NY, passed away on 4/13/17. She was born October 28, 1923 to May and Russell Goodwin and was raised in Tenafly, NJ. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1949 with a B.A. in English and became associated with SUNY Downstate Medical Center in 1954, serving as Associate for Community Relations during a 5 year period when the medical center was rapidly expanding. She was named Director of Public Affairs in 1959 after convincing administrators that a public affairs department was needed. Under her direction, the department grew rapidly and covered publicity, media relations, publications, special events and community relations. She was responsible for creating numerous publications, including a quarterly newsletter (The Downstate Reporter) and authored the paperback, “Medical Education in Brooklyn: The First Hundred Years,” published by Downstate in 1960 to mark its centennial year. She worked closely with notable faculty to publicize their research and achievements, including Dr. Samuel Kountz, the first African American transplant surgeon, and Dr. Eli Friedman, the inventor of the portable dialysis machine. In the spring of 1971, she featured an article in the Downstate Reporter on the plans of Dr. Raymond Damadian to develop a nuclear magnetic resonance device to scan the human body to detect cancer, now known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
After leaving Downstate, she served as Vice President of University Relations at Clark University in Worcester, MA and later as Vice President of The Cantor Concern, a leading executive search firm for the public relations industry. She retired in 1986 and devoted herself to her passions, reading, bridge, and traveling. She is pre-deceased by her husband, Neil Thomas Potter and her younger sister, Mari Brunner and is survived by her son Eugene Potter and daughter, Jill Potter. She made an entry in her personal diary in 1988 according to her daughter Jill that said “I read in ‘Howard’s End’ yesterday that life is a romance and I guess it is. I feel that I’ve managed to make mine a rather satisfactory and even beautiful one.”
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