Bonnie Lee Crosfield

BONNIE LEE CROSFIELD, 83, passed away on March 6, 2026 at the University of Pennsylvania

Hospital after a long illness. Bonnie was a long-time resident of Philadelphia.

Loving mother of Michaela Kim Crosfield and Alain Crosfield (Senafit), Dearest grandmother to

Christine Lee Crosfield, Quinn Vincent Crosfield, and Daniel Evan Crosfield. She is also survived

by grateful and adoring colleagues and friends from all over the world.

In 1980, she began a career at The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and

Anthropology (now, The Penn Museum). Little did she imagine that she would touch the lives of

so many people who walked through the doors at the Kress entrance and found her sitting at

her desk as the receptionist of The Museum. She always was eager to help them in any way she

could. Treasured by countless students, both undergraduate and graduate, faculty members,

curators, her colleagues, volunteers, and the thousands of visitors who came to The Museum in

her more than 35 years of service.

To say Bonnie loved The Museum is indeed an understatement. She was the center and life

force of Museum culture for all of us lucky enough to have known her. She went way beyond

her job description to help foreign students find safe and reasonably priced apartments, told

them where to shop, babysat their children, typed and edited their papers (long before

computers were in fashion) and dissertations. She would be sure visitors knew where to find

the Mummies and explain how to gaze through the Crystal Ball to see each other upside down.

If you needed to know how to reach a professor excavating in the deserts of Iran or in the rain

forests of Guatemala, you knew Bonnie would have the information and help you reach out to

them.

Bonnie attended all the events and lectures she could at the Museum. Egyptology became her

first love, but she was interested in everything happening in the lecture halls and exhibition

galleries.

To borrow from a memorial tribute that her dear friend, the renowned Egyptian Egyptologist

Zahi Hawass, said of her:

I am certain that a special place in the afterlife awaits Bonnie. She has left us,

and our hearts are heavy, yet we all remember her with gratitude and affection.

She never hurt anyone, never hated anyone. Her heart was full of love.

A visitation will be held at 10:30 A.M. with a funerary mass to follow at 11:00 A.M. at St. Francis

de Sales Church at 4625 Springfield Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19143. A burial will follow at

Woodlands Cemetery at 4000 Woodland Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19143.