Category: Memorial

News has come round the Web (via Mike Aubrey) that Carl Conrad, an exceptionally thoughtful, generous classicist-philologist who for a long time taught at Washington University in St Louis. I just posted the following reminiscence at the B-Greek bulletin board, descendant of the mailing list in which I used to participate with Carl.

Thank you, Jonathan, for passing along this news. Carl was a mighty man of old of the B-Greek mailing list, back when it was strictly a mailing list, and we all learned much from him — many of us about Greek, but all of us about how to conduct ourselves with grace and patience in a mixed group of international scholars, intermediate and beginning students, autodidact experts, axe-grinding non-experts, and wayfaring strangers.

I will remember him particularly in conjunction with his advocacy of positions on verbal aspect, deponency, the aorist passive, and linguistics in general at a time when these were not common currency in the biblical marketplace of ideas. He was kind and helpful to me as I was growing up into a Greek teacher, and I know that Jonathan and some of our old-school participants will miss him — have missed his participation — and will long give thanks for his contributions. Vale, Carole Conrade!

Friday afternoon’s memorial service for Dr Glenn Black of Oriel was sublime, both in the general sense of ‘celestially beautiful’ and in the more technical sense of ‘so surpassing comprehension as to inspire awe’. I knew Glenn only very, very casually. We met at Burns Night at Oriel, where Margaret and I were sat next to, or near to, them. He introduced himself and said, ‘I believe you know my daughter.’ I had only just met Imogen once, I think, at that point in my time at Oxford, so it took quite a tour of my mental rolodex to put together Glenn’s last name with the quiet, but pointedly witty priest I had met in Michaelmas. After that, our paths crossed only rarely and briefly, to my regret. My impression of him was of a learned and graceful pillar of college and University life, and subsequent narration proved that impression sound. I have had the favourable providence to count Imogen a friend, and when Glenn died last winter I was particularly touched on her behalf, as Margaret and I were doing our best to handle the deaths of her mother and my sister.

The service was conducted by my colleague the Revd Dr Rob Wainwright, Chaplain of Oriel, with support from the Oriel Choir, but the ritual burden was borne by addresses from a colleague of Glenn’s from University College, from one of Glenn’s students, and from my colleague at Oriel Dr Katie Murphy. Each bespoke the distinctive privilege of having known him respectively as classmate and colleague, as his student, and as his successor as Tutor of English at Oriel. Each revealed precious anecdotes, well-told, and incandescent with the honour and dignity, humility and grace of a man who was an Oxford tutor par excellence. I hope to retrieve the addresses at some point; they will remind me of the heights of my aspirations, and of the distance of my attainments from Glenn’s. In this, they remind me of the testimonies to my own father.

When I got home (an hour and a half, roughly, on the Friday afternoon roadworks-and-an-ring-road-accident X3 route) I was utterly wrung out, and was weary most of Saturday as well.

So I didn’t run yesterday; instead, I walked my two-mile route, with very occasional, very brief intervals of trying out a running pace to see… no, that just won’t do either.

This morning I did run, a decent pace, then coffee and fruit breakfast at home, then I attended the 10:30 service at St Helen’s, home to work on my address for the Healing and Wholeness service, then led the service, now home for dinner with Margaret.

God bless us, every one.

Last night closed the obsequies for Holly, my sister.

Cousin Alison had arranged a Meeting House of the Wilton (CT) Friends as a gathering place convenient to a great many of Holly’s dear (lower case) friends, and provided a Zoom link for remote mourner to join the event. Uncle Rich logged in from Arizona; cousin Rebecca and Greg connected from Colorado; and Margaret and I logged in from Vale of White Horse. Being as stodgy as I am, I feared that the gathering and reminiscences would make me uncomfortable, but contrariwise they were intensely moving. The recitation of Holly’s many kindnesses, her profound instinct for fashion, and her indefatigable determination to make, keep, and enhance relationships underscored Holly’s remarkable life.

They also helped me to understand some of the distance between us. The activities Holly organised, the selfless gifts for which everyone knew her, and the spheres of her expertise all were oriented in a way that structurally militated against either of us understanding the other.

I miss Holly, and will miss her more, over time. Best wishes to her as she navigates the Styx, or the Nile, or whatever other water may separate her from us. Best wishes to the many, many who grieve her loss; ‘She was like family,’ they say, and she was indeed welcomed and acknowledged as one. May Holly’s memory be a blessing. May she be ever blessed, as she blessed us.

Obituary in MR magazine
Obituary in Women’s Wear Daily
Obituary at Nutmeg Cremation Society

Elizabeth Hollister Adam, known to all as Holly, died surrounded by loving family friends on X April, 2024 in New Canaan, Connecticut at the age of 65, of alcohol-related liver disease.

Holly was born March 7, 1959, the younger child of the late Prof. Donald G. Adam of Pittsburgh, PA, an English professor at Chatham College, and of the late Nancy Tuttle Adam, poet and professional photographer of Nantucket, MA. She and her older brother, Oxford lecturer and parish priest in the Church of England, the Revd. Dr. Andrew K. M. Adam, of Abingdon-on-Thames, England, grew up in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

Holly developed an early interest in clothing and fashion. While still in high school she was taking buying trips to New York City with the owner of a Pittsburgh boutique where she had an after-school job, and she worked summers in both high school and college selling clothing on Nantucket Island. At Hobart-William Smith College (HWS) she studied English and built a strong community of friends. After graduation, she moved to New York City to workas an assistant fashion editor of Vogue Magazine. In New York she worked at Polo/Ralph Lauren and at Bloomingdale’s where she was the men’s and children’s fashion director, before she established her own clothing and home textiles collection, Holly Adam Home. In 1998, she founded Cashmere Inc in Greenwich Connecticut. She became an expert in cashmere, traveling frequently to Scotland and Italy for design and production collaborations. Holly founded the MensWearNetwork for NYC fashion professionals, while starting up a project management practice, HomeWorks. At home in CT, she expressed her love of food and entertaining through her Shop-Chop-Cook project.

Holly loved and was loved by a wide circle of family and friends, always ready to raise her hand to help or to gather them for lunch at her favorite restaurant. Her precise eye for fashion, her remarkable memory for names and places and attire, and her gift for making and sustaining connections among people made for memorable meet-ups at local Hobart lacrosse games, spontaneous lunch get-togethers, and surprise presents for cousins. She particularly cherished her cooking trips to Italy with her father Don.

She is survived by her devoted friend James Anagnost, and by her loving brother and sister-in-law, the Revd. Dr. Andrew K. M. Adam and Dr. Margaret B. Adam; by her uncle Richard Adam of of Albuquerque, N.M, her aunt Harriet Tuttle Noyes (Robert), of Arlington, MA, as well as a niece and two nephews, a grandniece and a grandnephew, cousins Martitia DeWitt Ornelas (Zuben) of NYC, Adele Racheff (James) of St. Croix, Carol Noyes Hewett (Adam) of Bellingham, WA, James Noyes (Karen) of Aston, PA, Alison Noyes Buchanan (Michael) of Holyoke, MA, Rebecca Gorrell (Gregory) of Crested Butte, CO, and more Noyes, Frost, and Spencer cousins who comprise her large and loving family.

In honor of Holly, memorial contributions may be made to Hobart William Smith or Waveny Hospice.

Donations to Hobart and William Smith in memory of Holly Adam Class of ’81 can be made online or by a check payable to Hobart and William Smith Colleges, mailed to Office of Advancement, 300 Pulteney Street, Geneva NY 14456 Memo: In honor of Holly Adam Class of ’81.

Donations to Palliative & Supportive Care of Nantucket in honor of Holly Adam (and Nancy Adam), in accordance with options on this page.

Patricia (Pat) Anne Pennington Bamforth died peacefully in her sleep, at Maine General Hospital in Augusta, ME, on February 5th, 2024, after a long and full life of care for family and community. She was born September 17, 1937, in St Louis, MO, graduated from Kirkwood High School, MO, and Northwestern University School of Music, and she received the National Leadership Award from the music professional fraternity, Sigma Alpha Iota.

Pat was married to the Rev. Richard A. Bamforth, for 58 years, until his death in 2017. She assisted him in parish ministry at Grace Episcopal Church, Kirkwood, MO; Holy Cross Episcopal Church, Poplar Bluff, MO; St Mary’s Episcopal Church, Rockport, MA; and St Mark’s Episcopal Church, Augusta, ME. Most recently, she has been an active member of Emmanuel Lutheran Episcopal Church of Augusta.
She was a strong supporter of music (the Cape Ann Youth Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Cape Ann); education (tutoring elementary students); connecting people with community and essential needs (supporting international refugee families, Bridging the Gap social service). She served on the Committee on Holy Orders of the Episcopal Diocese of Maine; and she helped Richard and Charles Allan Bamforth edit and publish their father’s autobiography, Iron Jaw: A Skipper Tells His Stories.

She is survived by her two daughters: Jeanne L. Bamforth (with Ann Flannery) of Topsham, ME, and Margaret B. Adam (with A. K. M. Adam) of Abingdon-on-Thames, England; three grandchildren: Nathaniel E. Adam (CT), Josiah P. Harris-Adam (IN), and Philippa G. Adam (ME); and two great-grand-children: Thomas A. and Lydia G. Harris-Adam (IN); and her two brothers, Charles K. Pennington, Jr. (OR) and R. Roy Pennington (MO). She is predeceased by her parents, Ruth Grace (Thompson) and Charles King Pennington (MO).

A service will be held for Pat at Emmanuel Lutheran Episcopal Church, 209 Eastern Ave., Augusta, ME 04330 on February 24, 2024 at 1:00 p.m.. In lieu of flowers, donations are encouraged to Emmanuel Lutheran Episcopal Church and/or Northern Light Home Care and Hospice.

(from obituary submitted to the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror)

Nancy Tuttle Adam, of Arlington, Massachusetts, and a longtime resident of Nantucket, died on June 20, at the age of 82. The daughter of artists Isabelle and Emerson Tuttle, both founding members of the Artists’ Association of Nantucket, Nancy too was a gifted photographic artist and poet. She exhibited her signature minimalist landscape photography at The Little Gallery and published several volumes of poetry over the course of her life.

Born on March 16, 1935, in New Haven, CT, she was an Island child from the cradle on, summering in the Tuttle family’s historic 1724 house. From her bedroom window perch, she loved to stick her tongue out at passing tour buses as they pointed out her ‘old house’. She was precocious, observant and sensitive to image and language. Nantucket ran deep in her veins and influenced her profoundly.

After attending Radcliffe College in Boston and graduating from Chatham College in Pittsburgh, she worked in a photographic lab in that city from 1978–1984 before moving back full-time to the island. Here she could follow the many passions that made her a Renaissance woman. In addition to writing her own poetry, she contributed to the Isle Say column of the Nantucket Map & Legend for years, commenting with astute and gentle wisdom on Island life. She was an active and formative member of Hospice (now Palliative Care) on Nantucket, an active animal lover, and an enthusiastic member of the Unitarian Church family.

Challenged for most of her adult life with multiple sclerosis, she made illness her companion not her taskmaster. Grace, good humor and a forgiving nature carried her on wings above the disease, even when she was forced to use a wheelchair.

Nancy is survived by her devoted daughter Holly Adam, of Nantucket, her daughter-in-law and son Margaret and Andrew Adam, of Oxford, England, and her sisters Grace Noyes of Nantucket and Harriet (and Bob) Noyes of Arlington and Nantucket. She was predeceased by her sister Isabelle Tuttle DeWitt. She was a loving grandmother to Josiah, Nate and Pippa Adam. Various nieces and cousins complete her large and loving family.

A simple celebration of her life will be held at the Unitarian Church at a future date. Expressions of sympathy may take the form of gifts to Palliative Care of Nantucket.

The Rev. Richard Anderson Bamforth, 86, of 17 Brooklawn Avenue, Augusta, died peacefully, at home, on January 6, 2017.

Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, January 7, 1930, the son of Captain Charles N. Bamforth and Dorothy Anderson Allan, Dick Bamforth grew up in Swampscott where he completed high school in 1947. He majored in French and Classics at Bowdoin College and graduated in 1951. After further study at Middlebury College he taught French, Latin, and Social Studies at Cony High School for one year before enlisting in the U. S. Army during the Korean War. In the Army Security Agency he studied the Russian language in Monterey, California and spent the rest of his tour of duty in communications reconnaissance on the border between the American and Soviet Zones of divided Germany.
Inspired by a German Lutheran pastor who reached out to American GIs, Bamforth shifted his direction and, upon release from the Army, entered Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. He graduated with the degree of Master of Divinity in 1958 and was ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. He served in two Missouri parishes: Grace Church, Kirkwood, and Holy Cross Church, Poplar Bluff. In 1959, he married Patricia Anne Pennington of Kirkwood. Their two daughters were born in Poplar Bluff.
In 1966 Bamforth was called as Rector of St. Mary’s Church, Rockport, Massachusetts where he served until 1992. Forever a student of language and literature, he took many evening courses at Harvard and, in 1982, earned an additional master’s degree from Boston University in the Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages. While ministering in Rockport, he tutored numerous refugees and foreign students in English and taught courses in Russian language and culture in the continuing education program of North Shore Community College.
Bamforth retired from full-time parish ministry in 1992 and moved with his wife, Pat, to Augusta. For nine years he was a regular substitute teacher at Cony High School, served as Interim Rector of St. Mark’s Church, Augusta, from 1993 to 1994, and was for 20 years a frequent supply priest in many Maine parishes. More recently he served as Assisting Priest at St. Mark’s. His book reviews and articles have appeared in several church periodicals and, with his brother, he co-edited the autobiographical journals of their sea-going father, Iron Jaw, A Skipper Tells His Story, published in 2002.

An avid gardener and photographer, Bamforth enjoyed his kayak and canoe at “Someplace Else,” his summer camp on Damariscotta Lake. Dick and Pat enjoyed traveling in Great Britain, where he sought out English and Scottish relatives, and in Russia, where he twice visited seminaries of the Orthodox Church. A spiritual director and small group Bible Study leader, he also did tutoring in the Russian language. In recent years, he taught a variety of courses in the UMA Senior College, focusing on literature, art, history, and religion.
In Maine, he served on several diocesan committees and was a member of both Veterans for Peace and the Episcopal Peace Fellowship.
Bamforth delighted in the nicknames others gave him. His grandchildren call him “Pa Moose,” high schoolers called him “Abe Lincoln” or “Colonel Sanders,” and parishioners often called him “Father Bam-Bam.” In addition to the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer he considered both Celtic and Russian Orthodox spirituality, together with the classical Anglican theologians, to be great resources for his faith and life.
Bamforth is survived by his wife, Patricia of Augusta; daughter Jeanne Bamforth of Topsham; daughter Margaret and her husband Andrew K. M. Adam of Oxford, England; three grandchildren: Nathaniel Adam and his wife Laura of New Haven, CT, Josiah Harris-Adam and his wife Laura of Watertown, MA, and Philippa Adam of Bristol, ME; sister-in-law Janice Bamforth of Belmont, VT; niece Judith Jervis of Danville, N.H.; and nephew Charles H. Bamforth of Kingston, N.H.
A memorial Eucharist was celebrated at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 9 Summer Street, Augusta on Saturday, Jan. 14, at 1:30pm, followed by a public reception. Interment of ashes will follow at a later date in Forest Grove Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions are invited for St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 209 Eastern Ave., Augusta, ME 04330.
Arrangements are by Plummer Funeral Home, Augusta.

Richard Bamforth Obituary from the Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic

Today’s my father’s birthday; he would be 80 today. This afternoon I bumped into a couple of ‘Net essays about parents and children and ageing and death, and only just now did I figure out why I was so teary and reflective.

Dad taught English Lit (among other things) at Chatham College. He loved bringing students to England and showing them the places so many of his heroes, and theirs, walked and talked, drank coffee, drank wine and ale, and wrote. He was a great teacher.

This evening I’ll head out to the High Street to meet up with some students and former students at the Mitre. I know Dad had visited Oxford — I’m not sure whether it was a regular stop on his student tours — I know he’d been here because on one of his first trips, he brought back a yellow Oxford University t-shirt for me. I wore it through college, I wore it for years after, and it may well be in a storage bin in an upstairs closet right now. He wasn’t a perfect dad, and I was by no means an ideal son. I’m a teacher too, though I’ve come to terms with the fact (amplified by observing what an excellent teacher Margaret is) that I won’t ever be as good at it as he was. But I’ll have a pint, maybe more, and I’ll give thanks for him and his imparting to me his love of teaching and learning, and I’ll try not to embarrass my students by weeping at how he taught me to care about them, and how much I do.

Thanks, Dad.

Last Friday night, a friend of mine from more than ten years ago died. Jamie had been undergoing a series of surgeries to treat his heart. He had begun the process with confidence and bluster that we would have expected of him, and came back after his first treatment with determination to resume life full speed ahead; but a second surgery was required, there were complications, and quite unexpectedly Jamie Mitchell of Goulburn, New South Wales, died as a result.

I knew Jamie as Dargarian, the mercurial, boisterous, impatient, utterly determined lead warrior — our “tank” — in the World of Warcraft guild that Joi Ito founded, of which I was an admin. Very often I was Darg’s healer; he would yell “BIG HEALS” into the guild’s shared audio channel when a monster was raining down damage on him, and on those occasions when I did not successfully keep up a stream of healing equal to the damage he sustained (sometimes through random mischance, sometimes through my own slowness, sometimes because Darg would keep moving forward and I’d lose sight of him) he would shout “Tank down!” and sometimes suggest that we start the attack over again as soon as his character died. “Tank down, it’s a wipe” he would say, and we would point out that thirty-nine of us remained who might possibly be able to finish a particular event without his participation. I loved healing Darg, even though he sometimes cursed me out for not doing a good enough job; that’s what we want in a tank, a sort of swash-buckling, irrepressible enthusiasm for the job he has to do, and though I healed many excellent tanks before and after Darg, none were as colourful, as manic, as mad for the struggle as he was.

Eventually the close-knit raiding group from our guild changed direction, changed characters, changed times and emphases. Darg — who, after all, was devoting his Australian midnight morning and daybreak mornings to our raids — took less part in both the group raiding and in the guild as a whole. He’d pop up now and then, we might run a lesser dungeon crawl with him, but the mad glory of the huge 40-member raids ebbed away.

We kept in touch through the Guild forums, through Facebook, and in the years after our guild conquered its first big raiding challenge, Jamie went on to marry and have a fine son; we’d see photos on Facebook and imagine Darg as a Dad. He must have mellowed over time, but not too much. I’ll invite Giselle to leave her own comments — but we know dozens of comrades-in-arms who will remember Dargarian, will remember Jamie, as an unstoppable force (for better or, sometimes, for worse) with a big heart, comrades who will miss hearing him explode into the guild audio channel, who have been sending him big heals, big heals, and who have been greatly saddened this past weekend to hear that the tank is down. For now, it’s a wipe.

Wikipedia bio of Aaron Swartz
Wikipedia backgrounder on the prosecution of Aaron

By now, most everyone who would make their way to this blog knows that Aaron Swartz died Friday, apparently by his own hand. Aaron grew up in suburban Chicago, so our circles overlapped both online and spatially; as far as I can recall, we were only in the same place at the same time once. In 2003, Josiah and I went to the opening of the Michigan Avenue Apple Store in Chicago, and while we were there I recognised Aaron. Apparently — though I didn’t remember this — Si went over and introduced himself, and I took a picture of Aaron browsing at a PowerBook. Apart from that, and knowing some of his friends, that’s all that connected us; Aaron didn’t know I existed.

When I woke up and began browsing yesterday morning, the news had just broken. The only media source that mentioned it was the MIT newspaper; as my tech friends woke up one by one, Twitter trembled with their shock and grief. Most knew that depression numbered among Aaron’s complexities; some remembered him blogging thoughts about suicide. No one saw it coming.

In the hours since we woke up to this intensely sad news, people have twittered and blogged and Facebooked in every way one would predict: unanimous grief and shock, lots of memories, many monitory reminders to keep in touch with the people you love, some self-blaming, some instructional columns about ‘signs’ or ‘what to do’ or ‘what not to do’, some angry criticism of how other people try to deal with the finality of a friend’s death. I don’t have the slightest idea how much the vastly overwrought federal criminal charges that Aaron faced affected him, but they certainly make a plausible hypothetical trigger on the second anniversary of his dramatic arrest. Some have begun a drive to expel the prosecutor from her office; Larry Lessig sees a direct connection between her miserably poor prosecutorial judgment and Aaron’s suicide, and since Larry knew both Aaron and the details of the case better than almost anyone, his word carries a lot of weight with me.

I don’t favour demanding that the prosecutor be expelled from office. Bad as her sense of this case was, she too has a life and family and friends, and we can’t know the extent to which her zeal contributed to Aaron’s death. (I do think it would be a mistake to re-appoint her, still worse to promote her — the public facts of the case show a dangerous lack of perspective, which could well lead to further misjudged prosecutions.) Better she not be given a cause to blame others, to turn away from soul-searching to bitter resentment; better that this be a sign of her competence than a moment for vengeance.

Suicide defies our capacity to reason about it (a bitter irony, given Aaron’s own brilliantly logical thought). We want to know so much more about it than we possibly can; the people we most need to learn from will never speak to us again. We can draw conclusions from the situations of people whose suicides left them yet alive, but that’s still a different thing than knowing what we need to from people who made sure their suicides were effective. Suicide – and its malign companion depression — affect us in ways greater, stronger than we can make sense of. When ancients talked about people being possessed by powerful alien spirits, they correctly described the force of these powers on mere human capacities (if not correctly identifying the ontogeny of the force). If we eventually learn something about suicide and how we may protect ourselves and our friends and loved ones from it, we will probably learn something that will catch all our grief-stricken pronouncements off target. For now, we struggle against something we can’t know enough about, and each of us will respond to our relative impotence by pulling counsel out our own repertoire of (falling-short) best ideas. And — for now — we’ll continue to lose our hold of some of the people who matter most to us. That saddens me.

Major Richard Thorburn Herzog (ret.), Ph.D., died back in January; I just heard about it from a round-robin email that some of our classmates from Bowdoin were circulating. Zog was one of the legendary figures of the fraternity to which we both belonged at Bowdoin College, the now-defunct Alpha Rho Upsilon (founded with Greek initials to correspond to “All Races United”) (we were PC before PC was a label).
 
Zog didn’t leave much of a trace on the Web, so I’m tracing his name on the wet concrete of my blog, here. Maybe someone will come across it and leave a reminiscence, or just remember him fondly, or wish they did. In the years since we graduated, Zog found a home in the Episcopal Church; speaking as a friend and as a priest, I offer the words from the prayerbook:

He that raised up Jesus from the dead will also give life to our mortal bodies, by his Spirit that dwelleth in us.
 
In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother Richard…. The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him, the Lord lift up his countenance upon him and grant him peace.

And speaking as a drinking buddy, I will lift a glass to Zog, to Charles Paisley, to the hockey teams of the U.S. Olmpic Team 1976 and of Bowdoin College, and to friends absent and ever-present.