The University of Scranton mourns the loss of a distinguished\u00a0alumnus\u00a0and civic leader whose death happened the very same night he was honored by\u00a0his alma mater.<\/p>\n
David J. Wenzel \u201969, G\u201974,\u00a0a decorated military veteran and public servant, died the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 5, at the Gino J. Merli Veterans Center. He was 80.<\/p>\n
A Scranton native who lost both legs and an arm while serving with the U.S. Army in Vietnam, Wenzel returned home and earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Scranton. He then dedicated his life to public service, most notably from 1986-90 as the 27th Mayor of Scranton. After leaving\u00a0office, Wenzel continued working as a pioneering disability rights advocate.<\/p>\n
The University\u2019s Center for Ethics and Excellence in Public Service\u00a0(CEEPS)\u00a0had long planned\u00a0to\u00a0showcase\u00a0memorabilia from Wenzel\u2019s remarkable career at an exhibit at the Weinberg Memorial Library. \u201cA Life of Service: Celebrating David J. Wenzel,\u201d opened earlier\u00a0in\u00a0the evening of Nov. 5.\u00a0It was attended by numerous local and University officials, as well as Wenzel\u2019s friends and family, including his wife, Janet, who accepted the inaugural CEEPS Public Service Award on his behalf.\u00a0Going forward, the award will be renamed in Wenzel\u2019s honor.<\/p>\n
\u201cDavid was a happy warrior,\u201d said Wenzel\u2019s friend, Joe Riccardo. \u201cHe kept that wonderful smile and\u00a0twinkle\u00a0in his eye, but he fought. He fought for his country in Vietnam. He fought for our community, both as Mayor and as an active citizen. Boy, he fought all his life to\u00a0maintain\u00a0his dignity; it\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0always easy as a triple amputee, but David was not going to allow any disability to get in his way to prevent him from achieving his goals.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The University of Scranton mourns the loss of a distinguished\u00a0alumnus\u00a0and civic leader whose death happened the very same…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[3562,28846,17089,14228,178,180,179,274],"class_list":["post-50310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-center-for-ethics-and-excellence-in-public-service","tag-david-j-wenzel","tag-david-wenzel","tag-exhibit","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-the-university-of-scranton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}