Necrology, 2004

Stanley Vandersall was the former chairman of the classics department at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. He began Latin at Roxbury Latin School in his native Massachusetts. His undergraduate degree was from the College of Wooster and his graduate work at Ohio State was cut short by the demands of World War II. He learned sufficient Japanese to interpret intelligence documents in Hawaii and Japan. After the war, he took his position at Nebraska and for 37 years taught virtually every class in the department. Students often referred to him as Commander Vandersall, though in his passion to cover all aspects of the day's topic, he would the classes long; no one left. His other passions were his pipe and the railroads of North America. He retired in 1985 but maintained his presence in the classroom, teaching a course known popularly as "Latin for Retirees". He was married for 63 years and died last November at the age of 87. His generosity is evident in his bequests to a number of classical organizations.

— Ward Briggs

Robert Edgeworth was a Chicago native, who received his undergraduate education at Loyola University in that city and went on to receive degrees from the University of Michigan, writing his dissertation under Shackleton Bailey on colors in ancient authors. His numerous articles and presentations covered a wide range of Greek and Roman authors, reflecting the breadth and value of his teaching first at the Australian National University, then at San Diego State, then at Louisiana State University. He was well-known on campus not only for his popular lectures but for his propensity to become a contestant on television game shows like Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. A man who put his beliefs into action, he was chairman of the Latin Liturgy Committee and was twice a Louisiana delegate to the Republican National Convention. His death in October followed a heroic bout against cancer.

— Ward Briggs

Additional Obituary

Michael H. Jameson, the Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies, Emeritus, and a pioneering expert on Greek history, religion and epigraphy, died Aug. 18 in Stanford Hospital of cancer, after a brief illness. He was 79.

A professor of classics at Stanford since 1976, Jameson established an international reputation early in his career with his identification and publication of the Themistocles Decree in 1960. The inscription on the fifth-century B.C. stone tablet, which Jameson discovered in a coffee house in rural Greece, illuminated the history of the successful Athenian resistance to the Persians in 480 B.C. and has been called the most important document of the Persian Wars.

In addition to distinguishing himself as an epigrapher, Jameson was a path-finding figure in archaeology, said Marsh McCall, professor of classics. A specialist in Greek religion and economic history, Jameson interrelated archaeology with the social history and ecology of ancient Greece. Throughout his career, Jameson focused his study on a Greek peninsula, the Argolid, in the northeastern Peloponnese, where his work included initiating excavations in the ancient city of Halieis. He also directed a long-running and intensive field survey in the area, which brought together scholars from many disciplines to study patterns of human settlement and land development from 50,000 years ago to contemporary times.

"The genius of Mike Jameson was to combine work in three of the major classical sub-disciplines—ancient history, archaeology and epigraphy—and to be both a foremost international expert and a pioneer in all three," said Paul Cartledge, a professor of classics at Cambridge University.

Jameson's work "knitted together literary, epigraphical, ecological and archaeological evidence in a way in which an earlier generation of scholars had neither the impetus nor the skills to attempt," said John Davies, professor emeritus in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool.

Jameson was born in London on Oct. 15, 1924, and grew up in England and Beijing, where his father was a professor of Western literature. In 1935, he moved with his mother to England.

Jack Martin Balcer taught at Denison and Indiana Universities and came to Ohio State in 1971. A renowned teacher, he was a student favorite whose own photographs of sites, coins and people helped make his courses treasured memories for generations of Ohio State students. His work on numismatics and the relations of Greeks and non-Greeks in Asia Minor won him numerous prestigious grants, but his first love remained the University and the students he taught for over thirty years.

— Ward Briggs

Paul Rehak was a son of Ann Arbor who graduated from the University of Michigan in 1976 and went on to receive a masters in 1980 and a Ph.D. in 1985 from Bryn Mawr. A White Fellow at the American School in 1981, he followed a one-year stint at the University of Kansas with appointments at the College of Wooster, the American University in Paris, and six years at Loyola University of Chicago. He taught archaeology at Duke from 1995 to 2000, then returned to the University of Kansas in 2001. Throughout his too brief career he gave selflessly of himself to numerous committees, as book review editor for the American Journal of Archaeology, and as secretary of the alumni association of the American School, and to his beautiful pack of retrievers and shelties whose photos still appear on his website. He died in June 2004 of a heart attack.

— Ward Briggs

Born October 30th, 1947 and passed away on June 6, 2004.

Shilpa Raval was born in India, raised in New Jersey, and was an honors graduate of Drew University in 1991. In the process of acquiring her Ph.D. at Brown she fashioned a superb dissertation on gender, language, and sexuality in Ovid's Metamorphoses, which promised a brilliant future and original contributions to the field of gender studies. She was two years at the University of Missouri, 1998-2000 before moving on to Yale, where she was an energetic teacher, and publisher on many aspects of the portrayal of women from Andromache to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her colleagues in Columbia and New Haven remember an irreplaceable teacher and scholar, her students recall a generous friend with a million watt smile that dimmed only after an heroic bout with cancer ended her life at 34 in May of 2004.

— Ward Briggs

William D. Fairchild, Jr. received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1951. During his first job at Juniata College in Huntington, PA, he prepared the indices for the 1955 and 1956 volumes of CJ. He was professor of romance and classical languages at Michigan State from 1964 to 1987, during which time he was a member at large of the Executive Committee and Michigan Vice President. He died in Fremont, CA, on January 28, 2004 at the age of 81.

Dr. S. Dewey Buckley Jr., 75, died suddenly Saturday, Jan. 24, 2004, at St. Dominic-Jackson Memorial Hospital. A native of Jackson, he was a graduate of Jackson Public Schools and Millsaps College. He pursued graduate studies at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois and Tulane University. He held B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in classical languages. He taught Latin and French at Murrah and Provine High School. From 1962 to 1991 he was a professor and department chairman at Belhaven College. He also was academic dean/registrar and vice president of academic affairs at Belhaven for 20 years. He was an accomplished pianist, serious gardener and gourmet cook.

A private burial service will be held at Lakewood Memorial Park. Wright & Ferguson Funeral Home of Jackson is in charge of the arrangements.

Survivors include a sister, Mabel Buckley Crawford of Tupelo; two nieces, Claudia Gore of Tupelo and Claire Frascogna of Jackson; a nephew, John Crawford of Starkville; eight great-nieces and great-nephews.