Obituaries | 1970-1979

CAROLE J. MURPHY, 74, a published poet, a college professor, and the owner of Wild Mountain Thyme in Pennington Gap, Va., died Oct. 27, 2016. At Wesleyan she was an Etherington Scholar, a member of the first group of non-traditional students returning to college through the community college system. She received a master’s degree from Wesleyan in religious studies in 1981. Throughout her career, she worked and taught at Berea College, Middlesex Community College, Bangor Theological Seminary, and Mountain Empire Community College. She was honored as the MECC Adjunct Faculty of the Year in 2015. As a published poet, her poem “Annie’s Night Out” was selected as a Chapbook Award winner by Nightshade Press in Maine, followed by other publications, including a poem published in Anthology of Adrienne Rich. She also owned and operated a shop, Wild Mountain Thyme. Among those who survive are two daughters, one granddaughter, two great-grandchildren, and an extended family.

THOMAS C. TUCKER, 62, an insurance executive and a survivor of the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York City, died Aug. 31, 2017. He received a master’s degree and an MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and also attended the Wharton School of Business insurance executive program. During a career spanning almost 40 years, he held positions as the Chief Underwriting Officer for the Hartford Insurance Company’s Commercial Markets Division and Senior Vice President of the Specialty Commercial segment. Prior to joining The Hartford, he worked at AIG, where he served as Chief Underwriting Officer and Chief Risk Officer for its U.S. operations. He spent the first 20 years of his career at the Travelers Insurance Company. During the 9/11 terrorist attack he helped a number of strangers to safety. Survivors include his wife, Maureen Gorman; his parents, Floyd J. and Geraldine Tucker; three sisters; and several nieces and nephews.

ANDREW C. THOMAS, an attorney at Idaho Legal Aid Services for 42 years, died July 17, 2017. He was 67. A member of Kappa Nu Kappa, he received his law degree from the University of Idaho College of Law in 1975. He devoted his entire professional career to providing free legal services to low-income people in cases involving housing, family, public benefits, and senior law. A leader in his community, he served in many community organizations and also served as president of the Third District Bar Association. He was known for his encyclopedic knowledge of statutes and obscure procedural rules. As well, his compassion for his clients was legendary, and it was known that he would sometimes give his eviction clients a month’s rent to help them when there was no legal argument to save them. A voracious reader and aficionado of popular culture, he had a wide circle of friends. Survivors include his brother, John Thomas, and a nephew. For the past year he was cared for by his good friend, Kathy Farber.

MICHAEL E. HUNTER, 67, an organist and choirmaster, as well as a countertenor, died May 30, 2017. He was a member of Kappa Nu Kappa and received a master’s degree from Wesleyan in 1973. Passionate about church music, he served churches in Connecticut and sang in the choirs at St. Thomas Church in New York City, and at Christ Church and St. Mary’s in New Haven, Conn. In 1999 he moved to Tampa, Fla., and became active at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, serving as director of music and organist until his retirement in 2016. He was a member of both the American Guild of Organists, for which he had been a regional councilor, and the Association of Anglican Musicians, for which he had chaired a national conference in 2015. He is survived by several cousins and many friends and colleagues.

DEBORAH CIBELLI, a certified nurse midwife for 35 years, died Feb. 7, 2017, at age 61. After receiving her degree cum laude, she completed a master’s degree at the Yale University School of Nursing. A pioneer in her field who advanced nurse-midwifery in the New Haven, Conn., area, she was the co-founder of Women’s Health Associates, LLC, Connecticut’s first private midwifery practice. Among those who survive are her life partner, Helen Lope de Haro, M.D., an aunt, several uncles, and cousins.

ROBERT MANKIN, a professor of British History at the University of Paris, died Jan. 28, 2017. He was 64. A member of Alpha Delta Phi, he received his degree cum laude from the College of Letters. He then spent a year at Johns Hopkins University before joining Yale University, the center of “deconstruction,” where he received his master’s degree in comparative literature in 1979, having credited Wesleyan as being the place where he acquired his intellectual identity: rigor of the philologist, taste for poetry, unlimited pluridisciplinarity, including sciences. He then went to Paris as a free auditor in philosophy at the ENS (École normale supérieure). Departing from the university path in the 1980s, he became a lecturer, a translator for UNESCO, a librarian at the U.S. Embassy, and a scientific publisher for an international organization. He returned to Johns Hopkins to study at the Humanities Center and under the direction of the historian of ideas J.G.A. Pocock. There he completed his Ph.D. on the English thinker of the Enlightenment Edward Gibbon, who remained a source of inspiration for him. At the age of 45 he entered the French university system, first with an ATER (teaching and research assistant) post at the University of Provence, near the village of Gémenos, where he also raised bees, and then, as of 1998, as lecturer at the UFR (training and research department) of English studies in Paris 7, then the Charles V Institute in the Marais district. It was at Charles V and Paris 7—Denis Diderot—that he made his entire academic career, becoming a professor in 2005 and director of the UFR for a short period of time (after his proficiency in Aix-Marseille in 2004). In 2009 he was appointed director of the Deutsch de la Meurthe Foundation at the Cité Internationale Universitaire in Paris, a graduate student residence and cultural center, which flourished under his leadership. He retained this position until his death. As a committed teacher, he shared his immense knowledge and his love for thought with all, from young L1 students to aggregates or doctoral students. It is this deep humanistic commitment that led him to work towards the creation of a multidisciplinary curriculum in Humanities at the Institute of Humanities in Paris. At the same time, from 2009 to 2013, he headed the Anglophone Culture Research Laboratory (LARCA), founded in 2008 by merging two pre-existing groups. He infused this group with an exemplary interdisciplinary dynamic. Having become a UMR (research center located in a public university that is affiliated with a French scientific and technical research establishment) on the basis of this work, LARCA as it exists today owes almost all to him. He also initiated the work on the documentary film that has just been completed, L’Abécédaire, filmé du LARCA, in which one can see his beautiful lesson in images, words and gestures. He was in the midst of working on an international project on the complete works of Edward Gibbon, when he became ill and could not continue with his colleagues from Oxford, Lausanne, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. He was truly the voice of Gibbon for all those who had the chance to hear him. Survivors include his wife, Danielle Torren, his son, and his mother, sister, and brother.