The Classics Department at UNC-Chapel Hill is sad to announce that Philip A. Stadter died last week at the age of 84 in North Carolina. In over forty years of teaching at UNC, and in almost twenty years of a very active retirement, Philip wrote influential books and articles about Plutarch, Arrian, Thucydides and other authors, and his friendships and mentoring and collaborations extended around the world. There is an obituary online, with information about a service Tuesday 2/16 at 2:30 Eastern time that will have an online component, at https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/newsobserver/obituary.aspx?n=philip-stadter&pid=197767979.
A longer statement from the Department about his life and work is forthcoming.
The Society for Classical Studies mourns the recent loss of Senator Paul S. Sarbanes. Obituaries like this one from the New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/us/politics/paul-sarbanes-dead.html
(Submitted by Mark Possanza)
(The website for Keely Lake's In Memoriam can be found here)
Keely K. Lake, 48, passed away on January 15, 2020, at the age of 48.
She was the daughter of James and Dorothy (Burcham) Lake, born on December 8, 1971. She had recently moved back to Hot Springs to care for her father.
Keely graduated from Hot Springs High school in 1990, the University of South Dakota with a BA in Classics in 1994 and the University of Iowa with a PhD in Classics in 2001.
She was a visiting guest professor at Gettysburg College in 2001 and Professor of Classical Greek and Latin at Wayland Academy from 2002 until 2018.
She was teaching online courses for Montclair State, Wayne State University and One Schoolhouse.
(Text provided by Tony Woodman, Basil L. Gildersleeve Professor of Classics Emertius at the University of Virginia, and Sara Myers, Professor and Chair of Classics, UVA)
(Written by Donald Lateiner, acknowledging gratefully the help, research, and energy of the following people in compiling this SCS memorial: Natalie Wirshbo, Greg Bucher, Brad Cook, Kerri Hame, Nick Genovese, Robert Eisner, Page duBois, and June Allison. Rosaria Munson and Joe Patwell also offered observations. E. Marianne Gabel captured the photograph below on the left at Le Trou Normand during the 2016 SCS meetings in San Francisco. Natalie Wirshbo provided the photograph on the right)
ELIOT WIRSHBO. 24 January 1948--19 July 2019.
Parents: Nathan and Peggy Wirshbo.
Education: Hunter College BA 1968, University of Pennsylvania PhD 1976.
Positions: San Diego State University 1977-1979, Ohio State University 1979-82, lecturer (eventually tenured) at University of California San Diego, Department of Literature 1982-2019.
Dissertation: "Attitudes toward the past in Homer and Hesiod," 1976, directed by Martin Ostwald.
(Written and provided by Ward Briggs)
Lee, Mark Owen (1930-2019)
Fr. M. Owen Lee (as he preferred to be called) was a beloved fixture at the University of Toronto, where he spent nearly 30 years of his life, and a perceptive critic of Latin poetry. He is, however, best remembered by the sophisticated public as a longtime panelist on the Texaco Opera Quiz, where he answered questions with remarkable alacrity (he was often the first to raise his hand to answer) and with a seemingly fathomless depth of knowledge about opera.
(Written by David T. West)
Grace Starry West (1946-2019)
Grace Starry West, 72, died of complications from lung cancer on Sunday, May 19 at her home. She was a member of the SCS since 1973, Chair of the Local Arrangements Committee in 1999, and trustee of the Vergilian Society from 1986-1989. Her name will be especially familiar to Vergilians on account of her groundbreaking UCLA dissertation on “Women in Vergil’s Aeneid” (1975), and to students and colleagues from the University of Dallas, where she helped Classics grow into an outstanding program with three tenured faculty members and a steady flow of majors. As John F. Miller, Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia, recently observed: “Her work on Virgilian women was pioneering; her leadership at Dallas admirable.”
(From the University of Mississippi's website)
Former University of Mississippi professor Lucy Turnbull will always be remembered as a beloved educator who could make her curriculum both easy to understand and infinitely interesting to her students, a mentor and a champion of civil rights at Ole Miss.
Her enthusiasm for the classics was contagious, which propelled her students to success in her art history, archaeology, mythology and classical civilization courses. Turnbull, 87, of Oxford, joined the university faculty in 1961 and taught until 1990. She died Sunday (April 21).
(From the Cornell Chronicle)
Classics scholar David Mankin, beloved by Cornell students for his inspiring and idiosyncratic teaching style, compassionate mentorship and the signature black sunglasses he wore to class, died April 24 after a brief illness. He was 61.
Mankin, associate professor emeritus of classics, was the longtime instructor of Greek Mythology, a perennially oversubscribed course with an enthusiastic following. Many students described it as one of the most memorable and meaningful courses of their Cornell careers.
He was a scholar of Latin prose and poetry, with publications including commentaries on the “Epodes of Horace” (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and on the concluding book of Cicero’s “On the Orator” (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
