PASSINGS / Emery Stoops
Emery Stoops, 106, a USC alumnus, philanthropist and professor emeritus of the USC Rossiter School of Education, died Wednesday in Playa Vista, the university announced.
Stoops taught at USC for 17 years before retiring in 1970. In 1994, he and his wife, educator Joyce King Stoops, created a $1.25-million trust fund to establish an educational administration chair in their names at the USC Rossiter School of Education. Two years later, an additional $2.25-million gift from the couple -- along with a $250,000 contribution from the Rita H. Small Charitable Trust -- endowed the chair in perpetuity.
Stoops was born in Pratt, Kan., and attended a prairie school before graduating from the University of Colorado in 1930. For several years, he grew wheat in western Kansas and eastern Colorado. Later in the 1930s, he came to USC to work on a master’s in education,
He returned to Kansas to teach but came back to USC to earn his doctorate in educational administration and supervision in 1941.
After teaching at local high schools for several years, he returned to USC in 1953 as a professor of educational administration and supervision. After leaving the university, he started a second career in estate planning, life insurance and tax-sheltered annuities.
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