Fred B. Gable, 82, Temple pharmacy school assistant dean

Fred B. Gable, 82, of Center City, who retired in 1980 as assistant dean of the Temple University School of Pharmacy, died Wednesday, May 30, of hypertensive cardiovascular disease at home.

But he was more than a teacher and administrator.

"He brought his love for music and dance to pharmacy students with the formation of the Mortar & Pestle Players," his daughter, Tracy Gable, said in a phone interview.

Mr. Gable organized the troupe in 1960 for annual campus productions, and until 1972, "he directed and staged all of them except for two, and for those two, he supervised the students who were directing them."

Among the productions, she said, were Bye Bye Birdie in 1966 and Funny Girl in 1968, she said.

Mr. Gable produced a series of campus convocations from 1957 to 1974, she said, that ranged from a series of authors talks to lectures by newsmakers to performances by the Lyric Opera Company of Philadelphia.

He was proudest of the pharmacy schools art collection, she said, which now includes more than 140 pieces. He helped launch it in 1968, she said, by suggesting that the graduating class contribute a painting in the memory of a young man who died after his first year of pharmacy study.

Mr. Gable was the author of Psychosocial Pharmacy: The Synthetic Society, published in 1974 by Lea & Febiger, and Opportunities in Pharmacy Careers, published in 2003 by McGraw-Hill.

Because there were few minorities in his classes when he began at the pharmacy school, his daughter said, in the 1970s, "he would go around to schools to recruit economically disadvantaged students," helping pay for their educations with a federal grant for which he had successfully applied.

Born in South Philadelphia, Mr. Gable graduated from South Philadelphia High School in 1947 and earned a bachelors degree in pharmacy in 1951, a masters in pharmacy in 1953, and a masters in sociology in 1959, all at Temple University.

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Fred B. Gable, 82, Temple pharmacy school assistant dean