Edward Kenneth Hawkins

Hawkins—Edward Kenneth Hawkins, 90, on December 8, 2018, at Collington Continuing Care Retirement Community in Bowie, Md. Ted was born to Ruby Annie and John Edward Hawkins in 1928 in Hereford, England, a small market town near the Welsh border, and grew up attending an English Baptist church. He went to the university in Hull, England, where he met fellow student Evamaria Guillery (called Ria), who was a Quaker. When they started dating, they shared their church attendance, and on Sundays went to Quaker meeting in the mornings and to Baptist church in the evenings. He graduated with first-class honors in economics and with a scholarship did graduate study at Queens College in Oxford, joining Oxford Meeting. After receiving his graduate degree from Oxford in 1952, he married Ria, and they moved to Ibadan, Nigeria, where he did research at the West African Institute of Social and Economic Research for three years.

They returned to England in 1955, now with a nine-month-old daughter, and he worked as a research fellow in African studies at Nuffield College, Oxford. During this time he took his family for a year to Uganda researching the road transport system, accompanied by Ria and their two children. In 1959, shortly after the birth of their third child, they moved to Sheffield, England, where he lectured in economics at the University of Sheffield and transferred his membership to Sheffield Meeting. During vacations he made several trips to Africa as a consultant, writing reports on transport systems. An invitation to consult for the World Bank on a team studying the Spanish economy led to an appointment to work there, and the family moved to Bethesda, Md., in 1963, enabling him to pursue his concern for Third World development at the World Bank for 25 years, in many countries and departments. The family were founding members of Bethesda (Md.) Meeting, where he served as clerk and on several committees. For Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM), he was a trustee and a member of Stewardship and Finance and Supervisory Committees. He became clerk of trustees the year BYM bought Camp Shiloh, helping to organize the financing of this second camp’s purchase and to bring the physical plant up to operational standards.

Always concerned about Third World countries, in retirement he served on the board of Right Sharing of World Resources, a Quaker nonprofit organization, sharing his experience from the World Bank. In 2000 he and Ria moved to Collington, where he served on the board of directors, on several resident committees, and on the Collington Foundation, eventually joining Annapolis (Md.) Meeting. His family members were very grateful for the support the Collington community gave him when in his later years he developed dementia.

Ted is survived by his wife, Ria Hawkins; three children, Christine Kranzler, Thomas Hawkins (Margaret), and M. Elizabeth Winningham (Bruce); seven grandchildren and their spouses/partners; and thirteen great-grandchildren, who, to his great delight, all managed to visit him in the last nine months of his life. He cared very much for this growing family.