Alumna, longtime donor and trustee Edna Shanis Tuttleman, ’42, passed away Wednesday, Dec. 18 at the age of 92 of congestive heart failure in her home in Bala Cynwyd.
Tuttleman and her husband, Stanley, were known for their charity towards the university and in the Philadelphia area. Their names adorned the Tuttleman Learning Center.
In addition to the learning center, gifts from the Tuttleman family helped create Tuttleman Counseling Center, a counseling service on main campus that assists students with a number of issues, including suicide and sexual assault.
According to a statement released by the university on Friday, Edna Tuttleman became the first woman elected student body president when she did so in 1939.
“I started out a shy young woman,” Tuttleman once told the Temple Times when reflecting on her career as a student. “I guess I just blossomed at Temple.”
The Edna and Stanley Tuttleman Learning Center at the center of campus was built with the assistance of a gift from the couple, opening in 1999.
“Mrs. Tuttleman and her family have been enormously generous to this city and to Temple University. Students at Temple have a better learning experience because of the commitment of the Tuttleman family,” President Neil Theobald said in a statement.
After graduating from the School of Commerce, which later became the Fox School of Business, Tuttleman enlisted in the Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service branch of the Navy. She later enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and, along with her husband, was known later in her life as an art collector and benefactor to a number of art institutions in Philadelphia, including the Tuttleman Contemporary Art Gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Stanley Tuttleman earned his fortune in the clothing manufacturing business and Edna Tuttleman helped run the design operations at one of his women’s clothing firms, the Corner House, which was eventually sold to The Limited.
Stanley Tuttleman died in 2006. According to an obituary in the Inquirer, Tuttleman is survived by her sons Steve, Zev Gruber, David, and daughter Carol Shanis Guber along with 12 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and a brother.
The family is planning to hold a private service.
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