Necrology, 2010

WALTER E. SPENCER was a real estate man from 1982 to 1986 who decided to return to complete his studies at Tulane, where he developed a commitment to Latin teaching before graduating in 1985. He received his teacher certification from the University of North Carolina at Ashville in 1989. He received his A.M. (1992) and Ph.D. (2001) in Classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was a visiting assistant professor at both Illinois (2001-3) and Case Western Reserve (2003-6) before joining the staff at J.H. Rose High School in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he was a successful and popular teacher from 2006 until his death. He was a devoted member of CAMWS (he presented a paper in 1999), the ACL and the APA. He died at the age of 54 in Lakewood, Ohio, on September 30, 2010.

— Ward Briggs

1962-2010

RICHARD EDMON PRIOR was born in Syracuse, New York, to Edmon and Stella Beaulieu Prior in 1962. At Baldwinsville High School in 1980, he accomplished the rare feat of receiving a New York State Regents diploma in four languages. His amazing Sprachgefühl ultimately gave him fluency in French, Spanish, German, and Italian and a working knowledge of Japanese, Sanskrit, Finnish, Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese. He graduated as a Latin major with a certification in teaching from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (1985) and taught in junior and senior high schools in North Carolina and Virginia, initiating the study of Greek at the high-school level in the Southeast in 1986. He received an M.A. from the University of Maryland (1991), and a Ph.D. from SUNY-Buffalo (1994), after which he taught at Furman University until his death, chairing the Department of Classics in 2009-10. He was a Life Member of CAMWS and Vice-President for South Carolina from 2001-2010. His summer expeditions with devoted students traversed Italy and offered the same wealth or knowledge and good humor that he displayed as a commentator for programs on the National Geographic and History channels. His research specialty was Latin pedagogy, beginning with 501 Latin Verbs (1995) through Latin Demystified: A Self Teacher (2008). He was a Buddhist who played the French horn and ice hockey. He adored Virgil, all dogs, winemaking, Buddhism, and his painting of Elvis on black velvet. He and his partner, Scott Henderson, were together for 24 years. He died at 47 from pneumonia on 24 August 2010.

— Ward Briggs

1920-2010

LOUISE PRICE HOY was born in Mullins, West Virginia on November 11, 1920 to Cyrus Christopher, a manager of coal company stores, and Eva Louise Price. She received a B.A. in Latin from Duke in 1939, then earned the M.A. ((1945) and Ph.D. (1952) from Bryn Mawr, where she was the last student to write a dissertation under Lily Ross Taylor. She taught at Swarthmore College and Case Western Reserve University before returning to her native West Virginia and Marshall University in 1963, where she chaired the classics department for 24 years. Her sophisticated education did nothing to dispel the memories of the disadvantaged rural populations she met in her youth as her father's job required her family to move back and forth across the state. She knew the value of Latin and she knew how to bring Latin to the students and to inspire her students to do the same. Her research specialty was Latin pedagogy. She taught overloads, trained her students both to be teachers and researchers, and generously supported both financially and personally the teachers and students who received insufficient support from their schools. It was estimated that by the middle of her career at Marshall, she had trained virtually every high-school Latin teacher in West Virginia. She was a longtime CAMWS vice-president for West Virginia. She died at the age of 89 on July 4, 2010.

— Ward Briggs

1931-2010

LLOYD LAVERNE GUNDERSON was born on August 24, 1931 in Pleasantville, Wisconsin, the son of a car dealer. He majored in history at St. Olaf College, gradating in 1953. He went on to receive a Bachelors of Theology from Luther Seminary in Minneapolis in 1957, an A.M. (1959) and Ph.D. (1966) in Classics from the University of Wisconsin. He had two periods of religious service with congregations in Ballard, Washington and Brooklyn, New York in 1957-8, and following his Master's degree in Black Earth and Cambridge, Wisconsin. In 1962 he and his wife Connie, whom he had met and married in Brooklyn, New York, in 1958, settles in Moorhead, Minnesota where he assumed teching duties at Concordia College as Assistant Professor of Classics (1962-7). In 1967 he moved his family to St. Olaf, where he taught until his retirement in 1994, chairing the department from 1967 to 1982, in which position he hired both Jim May and Anne Groton. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Research in Humanities in Madison (1973-4) and Wolfson College, Cambridge (1981). His research specialty was Alexander the Great on which he published a number of articles. He regularly attended CAMWS meetings and gave papers in 1986 and 1987. He taught at St. Olaf for 27 years and was married for 51 years. He died at his home outside Northfield on July 4, 2010 after battling cancer of the esophagus.

— Ward Briggs

Additional Obituary

1932-2010

GEORGE HARRIS's education formed a remarkable trajectory. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1932, his early schooling took place in a one-room schoolhouse. From that humble beginning, Harris enrolled at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and received his B.A. He moved on to Ann Arbor, where he received an M.A. in Classics from the University of Michigan (1959) and then to Evanston, where he received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University (1971). After those years of regular changes of scene and increasing academic accomplishment, his life was marked by loyalty and stability. His hometown sweetheart, Ina, was his wife for 57 years; his career at Calvin lasted 35. He was a longtime member of CAMWS, a devoted teacher of the classics, a generous volunteer in his community, an enthusiastic traveller and a perpetually optimistic fan of the Chicago Cubs. He died in Grand Rapids on July 3, 2010, following a brave and protracted battle with leukemia.

— Ward Briggs

1912-2010

HERBERT M. HOWE filled his 98 years with scholarship and physical activity. He was born in Bristol, Rhode Island, March 21, 1912 to Wallis and Mary Locke Howe. He received his A.B. from Harvard in 1934, after which he taught at the Brooks School in North Andover, Mass., (1934-40). In 1941 he went to the University of Madison where, at the Episcopalian St. Francis House on University Avenue he met and married a Londoner, Evelyn Grace Mitchell, and acquired an M.A. in Classics. After teaching at the Pomfret School in Pomfret, Connecticut (1942-48), he received his Ph.D. (1948) from the University of Wisconsin, after which he was hired by the University as assistant professor of Classics. Howe made a specialty of the classics-in-translation courses that were becoming rapidly popular after World War II. He taught Greek and Latin Medical Terminology, Ancient Religion and the Early Church, and the hugely popular Classical Mythology. To support his teaching, he developed textbooks, notably Classics in Translation (1952) with his colleague Paul MacKendrick. This two-volume work, still in print in paperback, is the all-time best selling book from the University of Wisconsin Press. With Walter Agard he wrote Medical Greek and Latin, Ancient Religion and the Early Church and provided translations for Barry Powell's Classical Mythology. With his wife Eve, who earned a Ph.D. at Wisconsin in 1946, he was a leader of the Integrated Liberal Studies Program at Wisconsin and in the 1950s served in loco parentis to the promising 15-16-year-old students who came to campus under a grant from the Ford Foundation. Graduates of this program later endowed the Herbert and Evelyn Howe Bascom Professorship for ILS professors. Herb once estimated that in his 34-year career in Madison that he had taught over 26,000 students, more than any other faculty member in the institution's history.

To improve his teaching of medical terms he studied anatomy, which reinforced his ability to maintain his physical exercise regime, for physical as well as intellectual vigor characterized Herb. He and Eve never owned a car, but walked or bicycled everywhere. Herb held international records for his age group as a competitive Masters swimmer and at 88 was named Badger State Athlete of the Year in 2000. He once estimated that he had swum over 25,000 miles, the circumference of the earth at the equator. He and Eve were an inseparable couple throughout their nearly 70-year marriage, teaching, mentoring, hosting, walking, and biking all over Madison, when they were not working (Herb continued to contribute translations into his 90s and at 94 published an article on the anatomist Johannes Wepfer) in their great Gothic house. He died on June 29, 2010 in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, at the age of 98. Eve Howe, aged 94, followed him two days later.

— Ward Briggs

1933-2010

Colin M. Wells was born on November 15, 1933, in Nottingham, England. He graduated from Nottingham High School and went up to Oriel College, Oxford. He then passed his military service in Egypt. He returned to Oxford to finish a degree with an interest in philosophy. While still an undergraduate he converted to Catholicism at 21 and began his teaching career at Beaumont College, a Jesuit public school in Old Windsor. He taught at the University of Ottawa, in the northeast corner of CAMWS territory, for two years, but after marriage to Kate Hughes in 1960 and the birth of a son, he returned to Oxford, where in 1966 he completed a D.Phil. with a dissertation on the frontiers of the Roman empire under Augustus. Back at Ottawa, he chaired the Classics department, established a new classical civilization course, edited Classical News & Views / Echos du monde classique, and served as Vice Dean. All this while, he maintained an active scholarly record, producing The German Policy of Augustus in 1972. Beginning in 1976 he and Edith Wightman led the dig at Carthage. His book on the Roman Empire appeared in 1984 and has remained a popular basic account. In 1987 he moved from Ottawa to San Antonio, on the southern edge of CAMWS territory, where he had been appointed Distinguished Professor of Classics at Trinity University. He retired in 2003 and returned first to Oxford, then to a comfortable house in Normandy. He died surrounded by his family in Bangor, North Wales, on March 11, 2010.

— Ward Briggs

Kathryn Anne Thomas had the unique distinction of being the longest serving president of CAMWS, taking up her position four months early due to the resignation of the sitting president, serving from January 1, 1994 through 1995. She also had the pleasure of hosting the annual meeting in her native city, where she also spent her career in the Classics department of Creighton University. She graduated from Creighton and received her Ph.D. from Loyola University of Chicago. Her abilities were recognized by her holding the Jacobson Chair in Communication at Creighton 1980-2. She contributed to the Standards for Classical Language Learning project of the APA and ACL. Her varied interests included the classical tradition in her native state, especially the sculptures and mosaics in and on the state capitol building in Lincoln that depict the history of law; libraries in the ancient world; ancient Olympic Games and their re-creations in modern times; ships and trade in the ancient world; Mediterranean diet and cuisine and diet in the ancient Greco-Roman world; development of the Greek language from antiquity to modern times; icon writing and Byzantine icons. At the time of her death she was associate professor of classics in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies. She died in Omaha on March 10, 2010.

— Ward Briggs

Additional Obituary

1945-2010

Jean M. D'Amato-Thomas was born on July 20, 1945, in Boston. She received a B.A. form Tufts in 1967, and M.A. from Middlebury in 1969, and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1978. Earlyin her career she taught at Williams, Tufts, Brandeis, and the University of Pittsburgh. From 1988 to her death she was professor of Classics at the Louisiana Scholars' College at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. She received a Mildred Hart Bailey Award for research at Northwestern and recently an American Philosophical Association grant to study ancient works in southwest Italy. She had long experience as with the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies at Stanford and as a Program Officer at the NEH. Jean was noted primarily as a tireless teacher who won an award for teaching at the University of Southern California and who cheerfully led packs of enthusiastic students across the historic sites of Italy, but not to the exclusion of post-classical Italian culture. She had a keen interest in operas drawn from ancient history or mythology, and an evening at the opera was the highlight of every trip. Her husband, Fleming Thomas, predeceased her. Jean died following a brief illness on March 9, 2010, in Natchitoches.

— Ward Briggs

1929-2010

Oliver C. Phillips, Jr. was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 23, 1929. He received a B.S. in Education from the University of Kansas, an M.A. from the University of Missouri, and a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Chicago in 1962, with a dissertation on the influence of Ovid on Lucan. He maintained his ties with the University of Chicago by contributing reviews to Classical Philology through the late 1960s and early 1970s. He began his career as a teacher in the public schools of Kansas and Missouri, then joined the faculty of William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, in 1963. In 1964 he was appointed to the faculty at the University of Kansas where he remained until his retirement in 1994. He received a Mortar Board Award for teaching in 1978, was a Visiting Professor at Cologne in 1983, and was given a CAMWS ovatio in 1993. He continued teaching after his retirement and was a contributor to the online Suda project. He married Shirley Lease on June 6, 1954, with whom he had two sons and five grandchildren. He died at the age of 80 on February 16, 2010, in Lawrence, Kansas.

— Ward Briggs

1914-2010

Arthur Frederick Stocker was born in Bethlehem, PA, on January 24, 1914. His family moved to New York City when Arthur was five and he retained the elegance, charm, and cheerful cosmopolitan Republicanism that bespeak the silk-stocking Manhattan of his youth. He attended the public schools there, graduating from George Washington High School in 1930. He graduated from Williams College summa cum laude then was on to Harvard where he received an M.A. in 1935 and a Ph.D. in 1939. At Harvard, one of his teachers, Edward Kennard Rand was at work on the manuscripts of Servius and he directed dissertations on Servius for a number of students, including John J.H. Savage, Frederic Wheelock, and Arthur, among others. These dissertations earned their authors co-editing credit on the first volume of the "Harvard Servius" in 1946. Arthur wrote a vivid and sympathetic account of Rand for The American Scholar in 1982. With his Sheldon Travelling Fellowship for 1939-40 was canceled with the outbreak of war, Arthur took a position at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, but was eventually called up for service in 1942. He spent most of the war in the headquarters of the Second Air Force in Colorado Springs, Colorado, as an Historical Officer. In 1946 he began his career at the University of Virginia, serving until 1984, with stints as chair of the Classics Department (1955-63; 1968-78), Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1962-6), secretary of the academic faculty and secretary of the general faculty. He was President of the Classical Association of Virginia (1949-52), the Southern Section of CAMWS (1961-3), and CAMWS (1970-71). Past the age of 50, Arthur married Marian West, a Latin teacher at St. Catherine's School in Richmond upon her retirement in 1968. She died on July 3, 1997. Arthur was a devoted member of many cultural and historic preservation societies in Charlottesville and could give unforgettable tours of the campus and the University cemetery. At the time of his death he was the senior ex-president of CAMWS and the last of the "Harvard Servius" group. He died peacefully at the great age of 95 at the Westminster-Canterbury of the Blue Ridge on January 13, 2010.

— Ward Briggs

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