The APA owes an immense debt to Roger Bagnall. He has an extraordinary gift for making organizations work. While he has served the organization and the profession in many ways, two achievements are especially significant for us. As Secretary-Treasurer from 1979-1985, he created the present structure of divisions under vice-presidents. As the profession grew and the APA had more to do, it needed an organizational structure that would be flexible, rational, and manageable. It was Roger Bagnall, with help from George Kennedy and Michael Putnam, who did most of the hard work of devising it and making it a reality. It is thanks to this structure, along with the generosity of the members who work within it, that the APA can offer its impressive range of services. The APA's organization is democratic and easy to understand, and it shares the workload well.
Professor Bagnall's other achievement is especially significant for us now, in 2008. When he became Secretary-Treasurer, the APA had a very small invested fund. He recognized that this endowment was insufficient for the work that the Association wanted to take on and so obtained our first NEH challenge grant, led our first capital campaign, and not only raised the necessary funds, but, just as important to our long-term financial health, saw to it that they were invested successfully. Without this endowment, the APA would have accomplished much less than it did since 1985, and it certainly would not have been able to turn the Secretary-Treasurer's position into our current full-time Executive Director's job. Perhaps more important, without this endowment, we would not have the resources necessary to conduct the current capital campaign to raise the Endowment for Classics Research and Teaching for the future of our field.
Prof. Bagnall served on the Finance Committee from 1985-1988, as a Director from 1988-1991, and on the Development Committee from 1991-1992. Always, he has given the APA the rich benefits of his organizational skills and understanding of how a non-profit can operate thriftily and effectively.
He has combined these outstanding services to the APA with others—such as his work in preservation and as an advisor to l'Année and the DCB—with distinguished administrative service at his own institution, Columbia University, where he was Chair of Classics from 1994 to 2000, as well as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1989 to 1993. He has shown leadership not only as an administrator but as a scholar. Not only has his scholarly work been of a very high standard in itself, but he has demonstrated and fostered new approaches to papyrology that have profoundly changed that discipline. A professor of both Classics and History, he has taught and shown how the study of documentary papyri can be fully integrated into ancient history and how much it has to add.
As we prepare to transform the APA again, it is an appropriate moment to remember all that Roger Bagnall did for us.