Jeanne T. Lupton, PhD and Dean and Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, died peacefully on Saturday, August 16, 2014 in her home in College Station, Texas. Jeanne was born to Eva Mendehall Traphagen and Hubert H. Traphagen in Chicago, IL on November 15, 1923. Jeanne and her older sister Donna and their parents moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1937 and Jeanne graduated from Washburn High School in Minneapolis in 1940.
She received a BA in history from the University of Minnesota in 1944 and went on for her Master’s degree which she also received from the University of Minnesota in 1949. She taught history at Mankato State College from 1950 – 1952 and then went back to the University of Minnesota to do her PhD in history receiving that in 1956. She met Robert M. Lupton (who was to become her husband) in 1959. She began as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota in 1960, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1961. She married Robert M. Lupton, Jr. on June 9, 1962.
Jeanne held various positions at the University of Minnesota including Special Assistant to the President from 1974 until 1979 when she became Dean of the General College. In 1986 she went back to Central Administration as Associate Dean of Student Affairs. During her tenure at the University of Minnesota she was a strong proponent of women’s rights, the importance of athletes having to meet high standards (while developing ways for them to achieve those standards) and for disenfranchised students to work towards a degree. In 2008 she moved to College Station, Texas to be close to her stepdaughter Joanne Lupton and her husband Donald Clark.
She is preceded in death by her parents, sister Donna Traphagen, and her loving husband Robert Lupton.
Survivors include her stepdaughter Joanne Lupton who was Jeanne’s “academic daughter” and Joanne’s husband Donald Clark, of College Station, TX; stepson Robert Lupton and his wife Margaret Lupton, of Aurora, CO; step-granddaughter Leslie Myers, and two sisters-in-law Elizabeth Hammel, of Stockholm, WI., and Margaret White, of Cutchogue, NY. She is also survived by her close friends Rose and Coronado Relopez and Serena Wright, of Minneapolis, MN., Evelyn U Hansen, of St. Paul, MN., and Joan and William Cunningham, of College Station, TX.
Per her request, Jeanne will be cremated in the care of Callaway-Jones Funeral Home and Crematory and her ashes combined with her sister’s and placed in the grave of her husband Robert Lupton. He was a distinguished veteran of World War II and buried at Fort Snelling, MN. Plans for a memorial service in Minnesota are pending. In memory of Jeanne T. Lupton donations can be made to the Jeanne T Lupton Legacy Scholarship Fund at www.giving.umn.edju/giveto/lupton.