Necrology, 2009

1926-2009

Roger Allen Hornsby was born in Nye, Wisconsin, on August 8, 1926. After receiving his B.A. from Adelbert College of Western Reserve University in 1949, he received the A.M. (1951) and Ph.D. (1952) from Princeton. After service in the Army, he began his teaching career at the University of Iowa in 1954, where he remained until his retirement in 1991. In 1960 he married a colleague in French, Jessie Lynn Gillespie. He chaired the Classics Department from 1966 to 1981. Remembered by his students as a learned and generous but strict and exacting teacher who made Latin poetry accessible and rewarding, he put much of his classroom technique into Reading Latin Poetry (1967), which is still the best book for teaching students to appreciate the varieties and nuances of Latin verse free from any critical ideology. His second book, Patterns of Action in the Aeneid: An Interpretation of Vergil's Epic Similes (1970), is a sensitive study of uses to which Virgil puts his epic comparisons. The book is only marred by the absence of any mention of Homer. After retiring he served a term as Whichard Distinguished Professor of Classics at East Carolina University 1997-8. He was President of CAMWS in 1968-69 and a director of the APA 1974-7. He was a trustee of the American Academy in Rome, a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and a trustee of the Virgilian Society. He died in Iowa City on October 19, 2009.

— Ward Briggs

Edith M. A. Kovach

1921-2009

Edith M.A. Kovach was born on March 29, 1921, in New York City. As a child she moved to Detroit with her family and called it her home for the rest of her life. She graduated from Central High School, then Wayne State, from which she received a B.A. and an M.A. in Classics. She earned her doctorate at the University of Michigan. She returned home to a career that neatly divided itself into two halves: she taught for over 20 years in Detroit high schools, chiefly Mumford High School, before moving to the University of Detroit, where she also taught for just over 20 years beginning in 1965. She chaired the Department of Classical Studies and developed her signature course, "Word Power," a vocabulary builder based on ancient cognates. Her success at maintaining and vitalizing Classics on the campus earned her the University's Presidential Medal for teaching. She periodically left home to share her skills with others, giving countless workshops and teaching seminars across the country. Her voice reached many students via her audio tapes for the Ullman-Henry Latin for Americans series. She helped write the National Latin Exam, served on the NEH's National Humanities Faculty and the Campus Advisory Board of the APA, and was a founder of the Detroit Classical Association and the Michigan Classical Conference. With the support of the University of Michigan she was able to spend a summer of research at the American Academy in Rome. As her friend Alice McIntyre said, "She had a marvelous ability for bringing all classic arts and languages together so that people developed a depth of understanding and genuine appreciation." She died 1 July 2009, in Bloomfield Hills, MI.

— Ward Briggs

Richard Thomas Scanlan was nothing less than an institution on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. So popular was his course on classical mythology that most Illini felt they had been shortchanged on their tuition if they did not take it. The class regularly closed at 1200, though it might easily have had twice that number eager to register for it. In lieu of a standard lecture, Dick would often dress up as a mythological figure, Hercules, Vulcan, or Venus and be interviewed onstage by a graduate assistant. He was one of the early consultants on the PLATO system, the first successful program for teaching via computers. His Latin Skills course was later adapted for Apple and PC computers and for all the common textbooks, especially Wheelock's. As with Mr. Chips, Scanlan taught generations of the same Illini families, often first encountering them in high schools when he delivered the latest adventures of his own hand-drawn cartoon character "Superlegatus." His courses were so profitable that his department had the luxury of offering rarefied courses like Old Nubian to only a handful of students. Like many a charismatic figure of antiquity, Scanlon was imbued by the students (and particularly the football team) with prophetic powers. So notable were his public reading of the omens at football games and pep rallies (even though his regular predictions of an Illinois victory did not always come true) that he, in mantic robes and carried aloft on a litter by students, was featured in PEOPLE magazine. A permanent deacon of his Catholic church, for which he received the Pere Marquette Award for service to the church in 2005, he was a noted preacher and advocate for the disadvantaged. He died on June 21, 2009 in Urbana.

— Ward Briggs

Additional Obituary

Donald R. Laing, Jr., age 77, devoted husband of the late Daryl L. (nee Wachs) and the late Lois Marie (nee Show); beloved father of Karen Diller (Jon), David (Pam), James (Joyce), Cindi Kimble (Darren), Ried Zulager, Dana Zulager (Cody), Kae Zulager (Ron), and dear grandfather of Andrew, Emily, Joseph, Jay, Joseph, Samantha, Madeline, Thomas, Wyatt, Lydia and Clayton; great-grandfather of Hannah and Jackson; and brother of the late Kay Westerberg and Janet Mellinger.

Dr. Laing was a Professor of Classics at Case Western Reserve University for over 40 years. He was a lecturer and actively involved with, the Cleveland Archaeological Society. He was a member of Parma South Presbyterian Church, and most recently a member of Fairmount Presbyterian Church. He also was a member of both church choirs, and the West Shore Chorale; an avid golfer and Cleveland Indians fan.

Dr. Laing passed away on Thursday, April 2, 2009. Memorials may be forwarded to a charity of choice.

Prof. Leslie Cornell Passes Away at Age 68

February 20, 2009, Greencastle, Ind. — Leslie A. Cornell Jr., who taught at DePauw University as an adjunct professor of classical studies from 1978 to 1999, passed away Tuesday, February 17, at St. Vincent Seton Specialty Hospital in Indianapolis. He was 68.

Born October 4, 1940 in St. Louis, Les Cornell received his B.S. in biology from C.W. Post College of Long Island University in 1963. Upon graduation, he served as a researcher at the United States Department of Agriculture in Albany, California. In 1964, he and his wife Cynthia (whom he married the year before) moved to Claremont, California, where Les taught biology Leslie Cornell 2a.jpgand mathematics at The Webb School, a college preparatory boarding school. While there, after discovering paleontology in the Mojave Desert and the Grand Canyon, and the monuments of ancient Greece and Rome on his first European tour, he began post-graduate work in classical archaeology at Pomona College.

In 1968, he enrolled in graduate studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia, receiving his M.A. in art history and archaeology in 1972 and his Ph.D. in 1980. In 1969-70, he was named an archaeological fellow at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem.

In 1975, Cornell and his wife moved to Greencastle. In 1978 he began teaching classical archaeology and Latin at DePauw as an adjunct instructor. At that time, he introduced the first classical archaeology courses into the DePauw curriculum and later led the first Winter Term trips to Rome. His semester courses included Greek and Roman Archaeology, Near Eastern Archaeology, and Numismatics. He continued teaching as an adjunct professor of classical studies until 1999, when ill health forced him to retire.

Cornell's work as an archaeologist took him, accompanied by his wife, on many excavations in Israel from 1969 to 1986, where he supervised the uncovering of Hellenistic and Roman ruins at Tel Anafa in upper Galilee and Biblical ruins at Tel Gezer in central Israel. He continued his academic studies with National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars at SUNY-Stonybrook in 1980, at Dartmouth College in 1985, and at the University of Chicago in 1988. He was published on the Hellenistic red-ware pottery uncovered at Tel Anafa.