{"id":2660,"date":"2016-02-10T19:53:41","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T00:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2016\/02\/10\/furman-loses-three-stalwart-professors\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T14:40:17","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T19:40:17","slug":"furman-loses-three-stalwart-professors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/furman-loses-three-stalwart-professors\/","title":{"rendered":"Furman loses three stalwart professors"},"content":{"rendered":"

During a seven-week period in February and March, the university community was saddened by the deaths of three current and former members of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: emeriti Carey S. Crantford and David B. Parsell, and current professor David W. Morgan.\u00a0In recognition of their years of service and contributions to the university, we offer these tributes.<\/em><\/p>\n

CAREY CRANTFORD<\/strong> had a style all his own.<\/p>\n

Maurice Cherry \u201965, a sophomore when Crantford arrived at Furman and later a faculty colleague, once described how Crantford \u201cimmediately impressed students and colleagues alike with his enthusiasm for teaching and the magnitude of his interests. I recall hearing my peers label Carey variously as a Renaissance man and a Baroque personality. He intrigued us with his considerable knowledge of both popular culture and the more refined worlds of art, music and literature, and we were captivated by his off-the-wall, often irreverent sense of humor and ability to posit logical connections among ostensibly unrelated topics.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Crantford died March 11 at the age of 87, Furman lost one of its wittiest and most distinctive personalities \u2014 and one of its finest professors.<\/p>\n

He held a number of official positions during his 33-year Furman career (1962-95): professor of Spanish and German, longtime chair of the languages department, assistant academic dean, and winner of the 1972-73 Alester G. Furman, Jr., and Janie Earle Furman Award for Meritorious Teaching.<\/p>\n

More informally he was known as the \u201cMaster of Furman\u2019s Ceremonies,\u201d a designation he earned because, for almost his entire tenure at Furman, he chaired the committee that planned all major academic events at the university, from convocations and graduations to three presidential inaugurations (Blackwell, Johns and Shi). His meticulous attention to detail and appreciation for pageantry and heraldry brought dignity and refinement to Furman\u2019s special occasions.<\/p>\n

He was also influential in developing Furman\u2019s study away programs, and he was well known for his willingness to share his knowledge of language and culture with the Greenville community.<\/p>\n

Peggy Ellison Good \u201967, who in 2001 helped lead a drive to endow an academic chair in Crantford\u2019s name \u2014 a position first held by Cherry \u2014 recalls how deftly her former professor reached out to students. \u201cHe had the uncanny ability to connect with each of us in a personal way,\u201d she says. \u201cWe all had identifying nicknames, highlighting some personality trait or talent or just something he made up. He knew who in the class played football or basketball, who was starring in the next play, even who you sat with in the dining hall!<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Crantford took great care to help his students see how all of life \u2014 the politics, the music, the art \u2014 permeated the literature of an era. He valued students, he loved the language, and he made what we were studying relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Memorials: Carey Shepard Crantford Endowed Chair in Modern Languages and Literatures at Furman.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cDAVID MORGAN<\/strong> is what those of us from the Midwest would call \u2018a great guy.\u2019 Saying someone is \u2018a great guy\u2019 is to call attention to that person\u2019s magnanimity.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s someone who is generous and thoughtful of others, someone you would like your parents or your sister to meet. A great guy is to be distinguished from \u2018a heck of a guy\u2019 \u2014 someone who has done something out of the ordinary, like bowling a 300 game or outrunning a police officer. And to be distinguished again from \u2018a good guy,\u2019 which mostly just means \u2018friendly.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI mention these distinctions because they are the kinds of linguistic differences that would really have interested David. He loved words and meanings, no matter what the language. It was the kind of activity David partook of in his teaching, and even more so in his dictionary of modern Latin, the so-called Morgan Lexicon<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was how David Spear, William E. Leverette, Jr., Professor of History, began his eulogy to his friend and colleague, who died of a liver disorder February 6 at the age of 53.<\/p>\n

Morgan was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wofford College who went on to earn a law degree from Vanderbilt. After practicing law in New York City for four years he returned to school at Princeton University, where he completed a doctorate in French literature. He joined the Furman faculty in 1994, and in 1998 he received the Alester G. Furman, Jr., and Janie Earle Furman Award for Meritorious Teaching.<\/p>\n

In the last week of his life, Morgan\u2019s former students filled the \u201cFrench at Furman\u201d Facebook page with testimonies to his warm, caring nature. Their comments described a mentor and friend who, in the words of Leanna Kelley Fuller \u201996, had \u201c<\/strong>an infectious love of learning, an amazing gift for teaching, [and] a spirit of deep kindness that just shone through all he said and did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spear echoed those sentiments in recounting Morgan\u2019s courage in his final days: \u201cI watched David take a number of phone calls from friends while he lay in his hospital bed. And although it was difficult for him to talk, he spoke openly, warmly and candidly about his imminent death. Instead of being concerned about himself, he actually ministered to those he was talking with, putting them at ease, reminding them of their<\/em> virtues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spear closed by saying, \u201cDavid Morgan was a great guy. He was a generous spirit both in his life and in his death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Memorials: Furman Chaplains Fund, or a charity of one\u2019s choice.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

DAVID PARSELL\u2019s<\/strong> intellectual acuity and quirky style were well known among Furman French students from 1969-2008. His death March 29 at the age of 71 prompted the following reminiscence from writer George Singleton \u201980:<\/p>\n

When I first sat down and watched the situation comedy \u201cSeinfeld\u201d back in the early nineties, I saw this character Kramer blow into the room and, after his first batch of dialogue, said to myself, \u201cDavid Parsell.\u201d Over the years I thought, well, Parsell is like Kramer, except Parsell is about 100 percent smarter than this character, and he has more heart, and he\u2019s quicker and funnier by a mile.<\/p>\n

Parsell influenced me \u2014 and I suspect every student he taught \u2014 in ways that I\u2019ll never fathom. When he handed me a copy of Ionesco\u2019s The Bald Soprano<\/em> in the spring of 1977, he said something like, \u201cYou seem weird enough to enjoy this play.\u201d And boy, did I. For some reason it never occurred to me that one could write comic work, whether plays, prose or poetry.<\/p>\n

As the term continued Parsell pointed me toward other works by Ionesco, and then Samuel Beckett. This may be faulty memory, but I am convinced that he said \u2014 or at least thought \u2014 \u201cYou\u2019re never going to be much of a French scholar, but you might understand the absurdity of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parsell, for me, was one of those rare professors whose chief strength fell into the \u201cI do not want to disappoint this man\u201d category. I tried to learn my verb conjugations. I spent a term in Versailles \u2014 a program he helped develop \u2014 even though I majored in philosophy. I took his course in 19th and 20th century French literature. I burst in on his other classes just to see how fast he could unravel himself from his preferred sitting position, atop the desk, in that double-jointed-at-the-hip manner usually perfected by yogis.<\/p>\n

Being around Parsell was similar to being involved in an ongoing art happening. It was like being in the midst of a flash mob continually, long before flash mobs became de rigueur<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I showed him my bad, juvenile, plotless, slapstick attempts at plays and fiction. He never \u2014 never \u2014 made me feel as though a life of writing may be impossible.<\/p>\n

I will miss those loud, booming \u201cUmmms\u201d that peppered his impeccable French, his genius English patter. In the afterlife, I hope that the Spirit in charge finds it necessary to say, \u201cYou know, we tried to use you for a template when it came to having writers create smart, hilarious characters. They couldn\u2019t pull it off. Here\u2019s a trophy, though, for you being you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Memorials: Greenville Humane Society, or a charity of one\u2019s choice.<\/p>\n

Image from\u00a0shutterstock.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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