Community Health Program founder dies, remembered for his kindness

After fighting a bout with cancer, Professor Seymour "Sy" Bellin, founder of Tufts' undergraduate Community Health Program (CHP), passed away on Jan 9. Dr Bellin was 80 years old.

He will be remembered by the Tufts community tomorrow at a service in Goddard Chapel at noon. Although Bellin retired earlier, he was still serving on the Community Health policy board at Tufts until the day he died.

"Sy was the first faculty member to invite us over to dinner after Adele and I arrived at Tufts," University President Larry Bacow said. "We had a delightful evening in his home on Talbot Ave. He was warm, gracious, and welcoming. He also was a terrific storyteller. Adele and I laughed a lot and learned a lot in a few short hours. For a new president, it was a wonderful introduction into the community."

Bellin began his career with Tufts in 1966, serving as an associate professor within the medical school's department of Community Medicine until 1973, when he moved to the Medford campus. Bellin taught courses within and chaired the sociology and anthropology departments.

"As a chair of the Sociology department, Sy was always thinking about ways to develop the department and to sustain its members," said Rosemary Taylor, who worked alongside Bellin for 26 years as a former CHP director. "He built a graduate department and nurtured a small group of interesting Master and Ph. D. students. He was a remarkably supportive chair, keenly interested in the work and lives of his faculty."

Determined to bring his knowledge and experiences from the medical school to the undergraduate campus, Bellin established the University's Community Health Program in 1975 and acted as director for three years. The CHP is one of the oldest multidisciplinary programs offered at Tufts.

Over the years, the CHP gained recognition as an academic major, but students may still only use Community Health as their double major. Thirty-eight students are expected to graduate with a CHP major this spring.

As Middle East violence raged in the early 1970s, Bellin and a group of fellow university professors from Brown, Harvard, MIT, and Brandeis established the Middle East Emergency Fund to aid civilian victims on both sides of the war. The Middle East Emergency Fund was supported by the American Friends Service Committee.

Taylor believes his friend was multidisciplinary in all he did. "In all his roles at Tufts beyond the Sociology department -- as a member of the medical school faculty, as one of the founders of the Community Health Program, as an active member of the Tufts faculty and as a concerned citizen, he was a sociologist to his finger tips even though he was trained originally as an economist," Taylor said. "He was always immediately interested in the why's and wherefore's of events and their social and political implications."

Bellin contributed to the book The Consumer Society, a compilation of essays on economics and health in society that was published in 1997. He worked on the chapter devoted to Family, Gender, and Socialization. The book was sponsored by the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts.

Current CHP Director Edith Balbach said that the CHP's attempts to create links between faculty and students was personified in Bellin. "Sy's kind and gentle spirit has permeated everything this program has done. It's hard to imagine the policy board without him," Balbach said in a statement to the University on Jan 30.

The Seymour Bellin Research Fund was created at the 25th anniversary of the CHP in 2000. The Fund promotes undergraduate research and celebrates Bellin's achievements of bringing students and faculty together within the program.

A reception in the Coolidge Room in Ballou Hall is to immediately follow Friday's service, and any donations will be given to the Tufts CHP student scholarship fund.

"It is hard to imagine the University without him," Taylor said.