Necrology, 2021

John Vaio, age 82, Emeritus Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, passed away on November 19, 2021, after a struggle with pancreatic cancer. John graduated summa cum laude from Columbia College in New York in 1961, and was featured in Time magazine and on the cover of the New York Times for giving his Class Valedictorian speech in Latin. He studied at Oxford University under a Marshall Scholarship, receiving his Masters Degree with first class honors. He completed his Doctorate in Classical Studies at Columbia University and subsequently taught there as an assistant professor. He accepted the chairmanship of the Department of Classics at UIC in 1975. John is survived by his wife, Evelyn Moore, his stepsons, Adam S. Moore (Öge Gözütok Moore) and Andre R. Costa (Melissa), and his beloved grandchildren, Conan, Alyssa, Logan and Mason. His family and friends will miss his passion for life, for music, his devotion to our family, as well as his great kindness and humor.

Written by Gina Park

The Department mourns the passing of our dear friend and colleague Kenneth J. Reckford, Kenan Professor of Classics Emeritus, at the age of 88. Kenneth taught at UNC-Chapel Hill from 1960-2003 and left an indelible mark on the Department and on countless students he taught at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, and made significant scholarly contributions on both Greek and Latin authors the influence of which is still felt today. When Kenneth was approaching retirement, his long-time colleague Philip Stadter (who himself passed away earlier this year) wrote a brilliant and loving appreciation of Kenneth for Tabulae, the Department newsletter, and our remarks on this page will not try to compete with Philip's article. We also have a full scholarly biography of Kenneth on this site, and will not go over all of those details here. The Classics Department at Florida State University, near where Kenneth and Charlotte have been living in recent years, and where Kenneth served as Langford Eminent Scholar in 2009, also have offered a remembrance of him.

Kenneth received his AB from Harvard in 1954 and his PhD in Classical Philology only three years later, in 1957; he would often speak fondly of the influence of Professor "RAB" (Robert A.) Brooks, and would later write a forward to a reprint of Brooks' Harvard dissertation. Kenneth's years at Harvard overlapped with those of many other distinguished Classicists, many of them life-long friends. Kenneth's scholarly work, especially on Euripides, Aristophanes, Horace, and Persius, but also Homer, Menander, Vergil, and such moderns as Samuel Johnson, T.S. Eliot, L. Frank Baum, Tolkien, and Tom Stoppard, will long remain influential. A 1962 article on the then-neglected Roman satirist Persius was reprinted in 2009 as the first chapter of the Oxford Readings in Persius and Juvenal; in reviewing Kenneth's 2009 book Recognizing Persius, John Henderson of Cambridge said "The 1962 essay "Studies in Persius" has been a big landmark for me …, and so it will be for Latinists to come." Kenneth's 1999 article on Horace Satire 1.5, the Trip to Brundisium, was on the syllabus for a UNC graduate seminar this semester. In Kenneth's 1969 book Horace, one colleague will never forget how Kenneth, parodying grammarians' fondness for over-labelling the case-uses in Latin, described one Horatian noun as being in the "dative of the patient lover into whose hands all things will be delivered." Professor Stadter aptly describes how the role of tragedy and comedy in Kenneth's scholarship and teaching reflects both his commitment to laughter and humor and his empathy for human suffering and grief: "His students and colleagues have found that the classical authors are not a field of study for Kenneth, but a fountain of life flowing with the sorrow, the compassion, the striving, and the achievement of the human condition."

Kenneth was a helpful, if unconventional, colleague. It was well known, among graduate students and younger faculty, that Kenneth's office was a wreck. Tables and desks were piled high with books and papers; books on shelves were in no visible order, and such furniture as there was seemed to have been gathered and arranged quite at random. This suited Kenneth, and it reflected his busy, creative mind. His reading of Aristophanes, Euripides, Horace, and Persius led him to other authors: Dante, Tolkien, and, less predictably, John Bunyan, T. S. Eliot, Tom Stoppard, and L. Frank Baum. Reading led to performing, and in the years from 1972 to 1991, Kenneth led students and colleagues in four fully-staged productions of Plautine plays in Latin, Bacchylides' Theseus dithyrambs in Greek, and various informal, but carefully rehearsed, in-class dramatizations of ancient literature.

Kenneth's humanity often came to the fore. A younger colleague reports the following. "One afternoon, when I was newly a father, I had a chat with Kenneth, who had four children at the time. How, I asked him, had he balanced fatherhood and a busy academic career? 'Oh,' he said, 'I'd rather change a diaper than write a footnote any day.'" A former student remembers that "…when I was a first-year graduate student, although I didn't have a course with Kenneth and really didn't know him, he came up to me in the hall one day and said, 'I heard that you had been sick. Are you better?' I had had the flu or something routine like that. I thought that it was very kind of him."

It is fitting that Philip Stadter's tribute to Kenneth appeared in the department newsletter Tabulae, because Kenneth played a crucial role in the origin and character of the newsletter. In the late 1980s, Ken Sams as chair decided we should have a departmental newsletter, to be sent annually to friends of the department and former students. He asked Kenneth to design the newsletter and work as editor. Ken Sams had in mind, of course, fund-raising, but Kenneth's conception, one that he felt would convey the nature of the department, was not limited to material suitable for that purpose. For each issue, Kenneth himself wrote an introductory essay on the state of things, ranging from our department to the world; the importance of classical studies to human life was ever on his mind. There was in each issue an appreciation of one of our senior faculty members, and there was a section, "Variae Viae Reportant," of news from former students, both graduate and undergraduate. Finally, there were short notes about special projects in or connected to the department. The whole was, and still is, called Tabulae.

• Philip’s article
• full scholarly biography of Kenneth
• a remembrance of him

Dr. Ashley A. Simone, 33, died September 16, 2021 in Colorado Springs, CO. She was born February 4, 1988 in Colorado Springs to Jeanie Young and Gary Crooks and grew up in Palmer Lake, CO.

Ashley graduated high school from The Classical Academy. She showed exceptional talent in art and an aptitude for Latin at an early age. During her junior high and high school years, Ashley enjoyed riding and showing horses. She also competed in 4-H horse judging and knowledge bowl competitions, and enjoyed many special friends who joined or supported her in those activities.

In 2009, while pursuing her undergraduate degree at Baylor University, Ashley traveled abroad for a semester of study at St. Andrews, Scotland. She spent the following summer in Athens, Greece, where she was an excavator at an archaeological dig.

Ashley completed her Bachelor's Degree at Baylor, graduating magna cum laude in May of 2011. As a University Scholar, she studied Classics and Great Texts in Baylor's Honors College and her undergraduate thesis was awarded outstanding distinction.

In 2012 Ashley moved to New York City with her family so that she could begin her graduate studies in Classics at Columbia University. There she received her Master of Arts in Classics and Master in Philosophy degrees in both ancient Greek and classical Latin, and finally, her doctoral degree in Classics in 2020.

Throughout her graduate career, Ashley presented over a dozen conference papers and published her research in internationally-acclaimed journals. She taught as a preceptor in Columbia's Literature Humanities program from 2018 to 2020, and in 2018-2019 was also a fellow in the highly selective Advanced Seminar in the Humanities at Venice International University in Italy. In 2020, Ashley completed and defended her dissertation, "Cicero Among the Stars: Natural Philosophy and Astral Culture at Rome." At her doctoral commencement, Ashley was awarded Columbia's Presidential Teaching Award by nomination from her students and selection by a panel of faculty from across the university.

• Obituary: gofundme.com

Chancellor Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies Julian Ward Jones Jr. passed away on August 28, 2021. He was born on July 11, 1930, at Essex County, Virginia and grew up in Fredericksburg. He graduated in 1948 from James Monroe High School as valedictorian. He read Latin at the University of Richmond. During the period 1953-1955, he served as a dental technician in the US Army at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and still found time to read Homer. He pursued a PhD in Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he met his wife, Liz, about whom he had written, "the most brilliant linguist I ever knew." After two years of teaching at Ohio State University, he accepted a position as Associate Professor at William & Mary in the Department of Ancient Languages in 1961. In his long career at W&M, Professor Jones served as Chair of the Department for over ten years and was instrumental in revising its curriculum and renaming it as the Department of Classical Studies. He also served as the President of several important professional organizations, including the Classical Association of Virginia, the Southern Section of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, and the Mediterranean Society of America.

Professor Jones' publications include two editions of medieval commentaries on Vergil's Aeneid, and many other works on Vergil and the legend of the sack of Troy over the course of his career. He also edited and translated from the Latin documents for the Swem Library Special Collections that dealt with the early history of the College. As William & Mary has transitioned from a small liberal arts college to a leading liberal-arts university, Professor Jones remained a voice of conscience for the importance of teaching to our profession. Whether in advanced Latin classes, in the Greek and Roman history courses that he introduced to W&M, or in his perennially popular courses on Pompeii and Roman Britain, Professor Jones' devotion to teaching and to his students has enriched the experience of thousands of William & Mary alumni and alumnae and has led to their lasting gratitude.

After 40 years of service, Professor Jones retired from full-time teaching at William and Mary in 2001, but his interest in classical scholarship remained strong and he continued his travels to ancient lands along with his wife, Elizabeth Jones, also a Classics Professor. He kept teaching about Roman Britain, Pompeii, and other topics for the College's Christopher Wren Association. Upon his retirement, W&M students, alumni, and friends established an endowment for an annual lecture in his name, honoring his legacy in the Department of Classical Studies in teaching, research, and service.

Professor Jones is survived by two sons, Gordon Bradford Jones of Falls Church, Virginia, and Douglas Ward Jones, of Williamsburg, Virginia; a daughter-in-law, Presie Supremo Jones, and two grandsons, Xavier Supremo Jones and Zachary Moreno Jones, all of Williamsburg. He was predeceased by his wife of fifty-four years, Elizabeth Frances Hunter Jones, and by his sister, Dorothy Irene Wilkerson.

Reflecting on his career at W&M, Professor Jones recently wrote for the Classical Studies alumni newsletter: "The principal charm [of W&M] was the succession of bright and eager students I taught. I would go to regional and national meetings, and professors from other schools would tell me that at last they were teaching a student who was being lured by some famous graduate program. I reflected that I had a student like that that in almost every advanced course I had taught at William & Mary. Needless to say, I, having retired a few years ago (2001), find myself longing for the good old days—days of engaged students and congenial colleagues."

Born on August 8, 1934 in Pontiac, Michigan, Howard Don Cameron would spend almost his entire academic life at the University of Michigan, a life that spanned over a quarter of this institution's history. It began with undergraduate studies here in mathematics that gave way to Classics after his sophomore year under the inspiring teaching of Frank Copley. He received his A.B. in 1956 and moved to Princeton for graduate school, where he completed his M.A. in 1958. After a semester in the doctoral program, he went home over Christmas break and was offered an instructorship at Michigan, to start the following year. Following three intervening summers of work on his dissertation, he received his Ph.D. in 1962. In two more years he would be made assistant professor, then associate professor in 1967, and finally professor in 1978. He taught for over three more decades before retiring at the end of 2010. But he continued to come to his office daily and mentor students until declining health made that no longer possible.

Of central importance to Don were the twin joys of amassing an eclectic body of knowledge that was as broad as it was deep, and sharing both the knowledge and the joy as an inseparable whole, like the two halves of Aristophanes' mythical proto-humans before they were rent asunder. The number of subjects that Don knew in great depth seemed endless, and attached to each one of them was a raft of often humorous anecdotes about people and events. He carried his learning lightly, yet also with a certain aplomb; he fooled no one when he called himself "a bear with very little brain," and there was no missing his profound erudition. There are those who say that knowledge is power; but for Don, knowledge was something much more important: fun. And the pursuit of knowledge was even funner (a solecism he would have chuckled at), and fun was meant to be enjoyed liberally with any and all. Of all the colleagues with whom I have shared my ideas or discoveries, Don was the only one who greeted one of them with a roar of laughter—of delight at the discovery and at the thought-process as I finished outlining it for him and came to the punchline. Of course, there are many among us academics who find it fun to know things and teach them to others, but few of us also have the background in performance (he was a seasoned singer and actor on stage) combined with preternatural gifts of wit leavened with avuncular charm to turn the act of sharing knowledge into something mesmerizing that sticks in the mind for years rather than remaining an ephemeral flash of light that presently fades. The dozens of his former students, some going back decades, who returned to campus to surprise him on his final day teaching Great Books in 2010—a program he had famously taught in since the 1960s and became the head of in 1983—attest to the lasting impact of his ability to share knowledge and wisdom in life-enriching ways.

A scholar's CV provides an entree into their interests and areas of expertise, but often cannot broker more than a superficial acquaintance with the person. This is mostly true of Don's œuvre too, but not entirely. On the one hand, his early and still-cited monograph on Aeschylus (Studies on the Seven Against Thebes of Aeschylus, 1971), his articles on Greek and Roman drama, and his masterful student commentary on the first book of Thucydides' history (2003) showcase his gifts as a learned, perceptive, and original reader of Classical literature and an expert exegete to students of the workings of Greek syntax; but the wizard still stands mostly behind the curtain—aside from occasional revealing glimpses, as when he calls a particularly gnarly sentence in Thucydides a "lollapalooza" or refers to a traditional yet obfuscatory explanation of the Greek middle voice as "bafflegab." We can peel back another layer when we add the even more numerous published articles from his other career as a zoologist and specialist in arachnids, cladistics, and biological nomenclature (a career that garnered him a curatorship at the Museum of Zoology in 1974). But it is his one monograph-length work in that discipline that stands apart and that, in my opinion, offers the best picture of the man for those who never knew him: An Etymological Dictionary of North American Spider Genus Names from 2005.

A great many of the things Don truly cared about and much of what made him tick can be found in one way or another in this work's 60-odd pages. Hidden behind the perhaps unpromising title and (probably to many) dry-sounding and abstruse subject is a glittering tapestry of astonishing intellectual-history sleuthing, linguistics, Classics, history, literature, and fondness for understanding personalities past and present—all piggy-backing (or spider-backing) on the central subject of arachnids, which might not be everyone's cup of tea but which Don deeply loved, and all displaying his tenacity in chasing puzzles to their roots. His research on this occupied him for many years and I saw first-hand how much satisfaction he derived from it. But compiling the Dictionary was not all just about figuring things out. It was a gesture of love and affection to the fields of zoology and taxonomy—fields in which he had international renown—, an appreciation of the importance of names and their histories, and a way of communing with scholars of the past whose lives and minds he had to know intimately to suss out why they assigned the names they did. For many of the names do not have obvious motivations or meanings derived from characteristics of the animals themselves, but are the result of caprice; their origins had to be ferreted out by intensive engagement on Don's part with surviving records of these scholars' lives, reading habits, personal interests, travels, and much more. (The affection Don felt for his fellow zoologists went both ways: a species of spider, the sheet weaver Tapinocyba cameroni, was named after him by two prominent arachnologists in 2007.)

Parenthetically, one of the things that may have appealed to Don about undertaking this work—and this is a bit speculative on my part—was the opportunity it presented to organize and systematize a body of knowledge. Many of the disciplines he was expert in are characterized by orderly systems of rules, algorithms, and principles: mathematics in his youth; the grammars of the Classical and other ancient languages (he talked about how sentences in Greek and Latin need to be "decoded"); the quasi-mathematical sound laws of Indo-European linguistics; the hierarchical ordering and organizing power of taxonomy. And, lest we forget, there was also his intimate familiarity with Robert's Rules of Order, which allowed him to wear yet another hat as Parliamentarian for the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts for several years.

Just as there did not seem to be a subject that Don did not know, it could also appear that there was no person on campus that he didn't know as well. When I was visiting Michigan as a job candidate, he was assigned to take me out to lunch, and both on our walk to the restaurant and on our way back, I cannot remember how many seemingly random people greeted him by name as we passed by. He joked about it, of course, averring in a mock-pompous way that everybody knew him; as I would gradually learn, it actually wasn't too far from the truth. Our lunch conversation was frequently punctuated by his hearty room-filling laughter, which I was privileged to hear countless times in the years to come. He was among the most social and sociable, as well as solicitous, members of the Department, taking the time every day to perambulate the halls of Angell and drop in on his colleagues, and regularly having meals and going to events with many of us. And his door was always wide open for anyone to drop by in turn; I never once was told it would be better to come back another time.

F. Carter Philips, BA'65, professor of classics, emeritus, and university marshal at Vanderbilt Commencement for more than two decades, died in Nashville on July 8. He was 78.

Nearly a generation of Vanderbilt alumni remember Philips as the university marshal, leading the procession to the graduation ceremonies from 1981 through 2002. He approved every aspect of the event, from the arrangement of the chairs to the sound of the musicians who accompanied the procession.

Philips was born on April 18, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, graduating from Richard J. Reynolds High School. Philips then enrolled at Vanderbilt, where he majored in Latin and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1965.

Philips continued his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a doctorate in classical studies in 1969. That year he returned to Vanderbilt as a specialist in Greek literature and papyrology, the study of ancient documents preserved on papyrus. Philips taught Greek language, literature and civilization to students at all levels. His specializations included the origin of grammatical gender, preclassical Greek literature and Greek medicine.

Robert Drews, professor of classics, emeritus, remembers teaching Philips as a freshman in 1961. "Carter was one of the best students of the Greek language that we ever had," Drews said. "When he returned to campus as a faculty member in 1969, he took charge of the Greek language program and became notorious as a stickler for the correct pronunciation of ancient Greek.

"He also was an excellent department chair, bringing us into the computer age in the 1980s, when some of us were computer illiterates. Of course, many faculty members remember his organizational skills at Commencement during his many years as university marshal. Carter was a wonderful colleague, and those of us who served with him will never forget him."

• College of Arts and Science
• Classical Association of the Midwest and South
• Phi Beta Kappa, the Alpha Chapter of Tennessee

Born September 23, 1927 in Amery, WI to Oscar and Ellen Erickson. Died peacefully on April 29, 2021 surrounded by his three daughters. Longtime resident at The Kenwood in Minneapolis.

Jerry graduated from Amery High School and joined the Merchant Marines in 1945. He married Loretta Eder in 1951 and they had three daughters. He served in the US Army and then attended the University of MN. Recalled in 1951 during the Korean War, he was a First Lieutenant in the US Air Force. He continued his education at the U of MN, ultimately receiving his PhD in Philosophy. He was a high school teacher in Edina, MN for eleven years teaching Latin, Greek, Russian, and Italian. In 1967, he became a Classics professor at the U of MN. He held that position for many decades. His love of languages and learning was evident throughout his life. He could read a multitude of languages. He spent Sabbatical leaves teaching in Moscow, Athens and Rome. He was awarded the Horace T. Morse-Amoco Distinguished Teaching Award and was listed in Who's Who in America.

Jerry, or Bop as his grandchildren called him, was always a forward thinker. In 1956 he began commuting to work by bicycle for environmental reasons decades before it became en vogue. He continued biking through rain, sleet and snow until he retired. He became a vegetarian over 30 years ago for ethical reasons and health benefits. He was a proud blood donor, giving over 8 gallons in his life. He was an ardent supporter of workers' rights and a member of the Marxist party. He supported many humanitarian causes both domestically and internationally. He coauthored a book and wrote numerous published articles on a variety of topics. He appeared on cable television on the Atheist Forum and was often a presenter on KUOM radio.

Continuing education and learning was a prominent aspect of his life. He was proud of his extensive library collection covering many fields of study, topics and languages. He always had reading material with him wherever he went. He was a very competitive Scrabble player and enjoyed doing daily cryptoquips. He loved to sing and played trumpet in a band in his 20's.

Always described as "such a nice man and gentleman" by everyone who knew him, Jerry was a kind, intelligent, articulate and genuine humanist. He was a vinum amans (wine lover) who enjoyed big band music, intellectual debate and visiting with family and friends. He could never understand how anyone could ever be bored in life - there was so much to read, learn and share.

November 29, 1936 – February 11, 2021

In Memoriam

Philip A. Stadter attended the 2003 Classics Department fall picnic.

From 1962 to 2003, Philip Austin Stadter trained generations of students at the University of North Carolina in the fine art of reading manuscripts and the depth of learning in Plutarch's Lives. A graduate of Princeton, Philip wrote his Harvard dissertation on Plutarch under the eminent historian Herbert Bloch and though he wrote important articles on Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and even some Romans like Horace, Livy, Pliny, and Plautus, the Greek historians of the Roman period remained his scholarly passion throughout his career. His work on Arrian is standard and his commentary on Plutarch's Life of Pericles is essentially a multifaceted history of the Athenian Golden Age. Philip had a fine ear for stylistic and linguistic nuance, which he often passed over to make what was to him a more important historical observation. The book also embodies its author's ability, often displayed in the classroom, to enlighten the scholarly with details of manuscript or historical abstruseness while at the same time including an introduction that is clear and informative to those who have never heard of Plutarch.

Philip reportedly was hired by chair Albert Suskin on the advice of Kenneth Reckford who had been a fellow-student at Harvard and had come to UNC the year before. Both men would serve their entire careers at Chapel Hill and retire on the same day after 40 years of service. Philip served as chair of the department for a decade, he edited AJP, he was a director of the APA and twice served CAMWS as Vice-President for North Carolina. His greater contribution to CAMWS will be found by looking around any CAMWS meeting. You will see any number of Stadter students who have become leaders in research and service to the association. Si monumentum requiritis, circumspicite.