Richard J. Ambacher Jr., 82, Rowan professor

Richard J. Ambacher Jr. met his future wife, Elaine Bonelli, in an algebra class at Wildwood High School in the early 1950s.

"He was so good at math," she said, and so she accepted his offer to tutor her at her home.

It was on an early visit, she said, that she realized that "he was living alone" in Wildwood. "He had left his family in Philadelphia; they were breaking up."

She never found out where he was living, just that in his Wildwood life, "he had an awful time."

When her father, who owned a supermarket in Wildwood, learned of Mr. Ambacher's problem, "my father said, 'Come eat at our house.' And he did." Often.

"We were doing the best we could to take care of him," she said. "But he was a smart guy. On the football team, he played tackle. He was a tough guy."

On Tuesday, July 19, Mr. Ambacher, 82, of Glassboro, who retired as a professor of communications at Rowan University in 2000, died of heart failure at Kennedy University Hospital in Washington Township.

Mr. Ambacher grew up in Glenside, Montgomery County, graduated from Wildwood High School in 1952, and was married in 1954, in the year he turned 20.

A year older than Mr. Ambacher, his future wife studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan and then was a drama student at the University of Miami, before returning to Wildwood.

Mr. Ambacher earned a bachelor's in English literature at Rowan, then Glassboro State College, in 1961 and a master's in fine arts at Yale University in 1964.

"He was going to be a playwright," she said, but after college graduation he spent a year teaching English at Parsippany High School before going off to Yale, where he was also a sports reporter for the New Haven Register.

He returned to New Jersey to teach in the 1965-66 academic year at Fort Lee High School, his wife said, and wrote a play produced at a site whose name is lost to memory.

Mr. Ambacher's Rowan career began in 1966 where, his wife said, he worked first in public relations and then became a communications teacher.

Jack Gillespie, who retired from Rowan's communications department in 1992, had known Mr. Ambacher since 1969.

"He hired me as his assistant. He was director of community relations," Gillespie said.

After Gillespie worked briefly as a Gloucester County Times editor, Mr. Ambacher "hired me again in 1972," where they were now both communications department teachers.

"He started the creative writing program," Gillespie said, and "he produced several plays" that he had written. In 1992, Mr. Ambacher's textbook Semantics: Arriving at Meaning was produced by Kendall/Hunt Publishing.

"He was an excellent teacher," Gillespie said. "Tough but fair."

Mr. Ambacher was a former board member for what is now Rowan College at Gloucester County and, for a time, its board chairman.He was a former member of the Gloucester County Library Commission, Rowan's Brown and Gold Gridiron Club, and the former Woodbury Country Club.

Besides his wife, Mr. Ambacher is survived by sons Richard J. III and John, three brothers, two sisters, and four grandchildren.

A visitation was set from 10 a.m. Monday, July 25, at the Kelley Funeral Home, 125 Pitman Ave., Pitman, before an 11 a.m. memorial service there.

Donations may be sent to the August Bagin-Richard Ambacher Sr. Memorial Scholarship, Rowan University Foundation, 201 Mullica Hill Rd., Glassboro, N.J. 08028.

Condolences may be offered to the family at www.kelleyfhpitman.com.

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