Philip Perdew liked the tangible rewards of painting and jewelry-making – it was only years later he’d learn of the impression he had made as a teacher.
Perdew, who died Sept. 19, the day before his 92nd birthday, was a professor of education at the University of Denver for 38 years.
A service is planned at 2 p.m. Thursday at University Park United Methodist Church, 2180 S. University Blvd.
Well before his retirement, Perdew became fascinated with rocks and began picking them up and bringing them home to polish.
Before long he learned how to set his stones in silver and was making bracelets, earrings, necklaces and bolo ties for himself and his family.
One room in his southeast Denver home was filled with his jewelry-making tools.
Perdew also took up painting – both oil and water. His work ranged from mountain lakes to irrigation circles on the Eastern Plains and the brilliantly colored rings of Saturn.
“He didn’t like empty walls,” said one of his daughters, Jean anne Fields of San Diego. “Every wall had a painting on it.”
At DU, Perdew taught generations of teachers and school administrators.
When he found the textbooks lacking he wrote his own – “The Secondary School in Action.”
Many former students – who became teachers, principals, superintendents and college professors – wrote back to Perdew, said another daughter, Phyllis Ward of Denver.
Fields described her dad as a kind, gentle person, adding that she was the one of his three children to push the envelope.
“He educated people and I educated him on teenagers,” she said with a laugh.
Philip Wilbur Perdew was born on Sept. 20, 1915, in Oskaloosa, Iowa, and moved with his family to Calistoga, Calif., when he was an adolescent.
After high school in Santa Cruz, Calif., he earned a bachelor’s degree in education from UCLA and later his master’s and doctorate there.
Unable to afford a fraternity, he and his friends dubbed themselves the the SPNs, the Sigma Phi Nothings.
He met Ruth Sevier at UCLA and they married on Aug. 2, 1939.
They met on a church skating party. Perdew was floundering and she held on to him so he wouldn’t fall.
He liked to tell the story, always adding, “She’s been holding me up ever since.”
Perdew taught children in a tuberculosis sanitarium and other children who were physically handicapped, both in Southern California, before moving to Denver and his job at DU.
In addition to his wife and daughters, he is survived by his son, John Perdew of Griffin, Ga.; 11 grandchildren; and 19 great-grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
